Sunngindale’s Old Course has long been the consensus pick for the best of the heathland courses. While others, like it’s younger brother the New Course, Swinley Forest, and St. George’s Hill have crept up on it in the rankings, the Old still usually comes out on top. It has been a mainstay in the world top 50 since well before I started looking at these lists in the late 90s.

While I haven’t played enough of the world top 100 to comment on the Old Course’s placement, I’d agree with the consensus that this is the best of at least the London area heathland courses. Why? Variety. I don’t believe that I’ve ever played a course with such a delightful mix of holes. There are really short holes, there are really long holes. There are long vistas, there are funky uphill blind shots. There are big undulating greens and there are small flat ones.

And for the golf course architecture buffs, there are the older Willie Park Jr. holes and the newer Harry Colt ones. The major difference between these is in the green sites and the shaping around them. Park Jr.’s green tend to be on flat or gently sloping land with open approaches while Colt built several of his greens into hillsides with diagonal bunkers on the approach. I usually like consistency in shaping style across the course but the blend of these two style just works on the Old Course. Maybe it’s because Colt’s style works better on hillsides and Park Jr.’s works better on flat land and were always going to have to be a few of each type of hole on this sprawling piece of forested heathland.

But I don’t want to spend too much time getting into who did what on the Old Course because I’d rather talk about the individual holes. This course has more good holes than almost any course that I can think of. Several are quite quirky. It may not be much of a test of golf for the best players in the world anymore but for the rest of us, I can hardly imagine a more enjoyable one on which to play golf.


The drizzle stopped after my morning round on the New but it kept everyone off the course, which I had pretty much all to myself. One of the quaint (but expensive) homes to the right of the fairway was burning wood and the set the tone perfectly for this course on this cold, grey day. The first hole is a short and wide-open par 5. It introduces us to some of the English quirk that we’ll find throughout this course in this case, a series of diagonal, heather-covered ridges running into the edges of the fairway starting about 150 yards short of the green. On Google Earth, it looks like these formed a hedge line along the edge of an old property but apparently there’s some archaeological significance here—they dug up some ancient pottery which is in a museum in nearby Reading.

The green is simple and slopes with the lay of the land from front right to back left, typical of the older Park Jr. greens throughout the course.

The second hole is an outstanding, but very difficult long par 4. The hole bends gently to the left and the drive is on a diagonal over another heather-covered ridge and a creek. This hole’s charming English quirk is a neighborhood road that crosses the fairway about 250 yards from the tee.

But not all quirks are charming. The second is semi-blind over a ridge to a small green that slopes away and is fronted by a deep bunker. There’s some room (but not a lot) on the right to run the ball onto the green but if you push is just a little, you’re in the heather. I’d think of the first two holes as one hole with two putting greens and a par of 9. You’re probably more likely to make 4 on the par 5 first and 5 on the par 4 second than vice versa.

The third is the first of what is by far the best set of drivable par 4s that I’ve seen on any course. I suspect that this is a Colt hole because of all of the bunkering and mounding around the green. This is really a textbook drivable par 4; while the carry over the bunkers on the right is only about 190 yards, you want to keep your ball up the lower left side because the green is narrow and two-tiered from high left to low right. An approach from the left side will leave an awkward pitch into a narrower aspect of the green which slopes away from you. So the right side of the fairway is optimal, but the bunkers continue all the way to the green.

My drive (near the bunker on the right) was actually too good on this day because they stuck the pin in the back-right corner. Oops.

The fourth features all of the standard elements of a Colt par 3. Uphill? Check. Green built into the side of a hill with bunkers on the low side? Check. Deeper than wide? Check. Actually this green is pretty big and the narrowness isn’t an issue. But the slope is—it tilts pretty good from back to front.

The drive on the par 4 fifth is one of the iconic vistas in heathland golf although I’m not really sure why. It’s an attractive hole, but I never thought of it as an aesthetic standout when I saw those pictures—especially compared to some of the others that you can take on both this and nearby courses.

​But it is a very good and tough hole. The bunkers on the right start at about 235 yards and narrow the fairway considerably if you go past 250. The approach to the green has two quirks: (1) a pond 40 yards short of the green with a bizarre wood plank running down its length and (2) a random heather-covered mound about 20 yards short and left of the green. Neither of these should be a factor for good players who hit good drives but they would cause all kinds of problems for higher handicap golfers.

The sixth hole isn’t one of the course’s better holes although the heather covered ridges that separate the driving zone from the green and the steeply left-to-right pitched green are interesting.

Just behind the sixth green is the tee for the par 4 seventh, where the Old Course goes from being very good to being magical. The drive is a real ‘what the hell?’ moment; the first 115 yards are straight uphill over a bunker. No architect would place the tee here today—they’d have us walk the 100 yards up the hill and just start the hole from there.

But then they’d be depriving us of one of the biggest surprises and one of my favorite moments on any course that I’ve played: the moment when you crest the hill and it’s like you’re stepping into a grand cathedral of golf. The green is definitely a Colt—built into a steep right-to-left with bunkers and a drop-off to its left. Apparently the original Park Jr. green was somewhere in the hollow to the left in what’s now (some 100 years) later, a mature forest.

To climb this hill, Colt does a switchback in his routing with another Coltian par 3. Although I didn’t think that this hole was particularly special, the setting is just charming.

The ninth is the second of the Old’s great drivable par 4s. While this hole gets less attention than the third and the eleventh, I found it brilliant. It’s only about 260 yards from the tips to the front of the green, but bunkers cut diagonally across the fairway from the left starting at 215 yards. The green angles from front-left to back-right and the back-right corner sits up on a higher tier (out of play.

While the flag was on the easier left side of the green on this day, the further right that they put the flag, the more important that you approach from the left side. If the flag were all the way back right and you missed, say in the right fairway bunker about 30 yards short of the green, you’d have 40 yard fairway bunker shot over another bunker to maybe a 30 foot deep area that slopes into the woods if you miss long. While you can recover from most places if the pin is on the left, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a pin where the angle of approach is as important as a back-right pin here.

In their 1994 Shell’s Wonderful World’ of Golf match with a back-right pin, Nick Faldo drove it in the short right bunker then put his next one over the green. Greg Norman drove it in the left green side bunker. Both made 4 on this 275 yard hole.

The other oft-photographed hole on the Old Course is the long par 4 tenth. This is a justifiably revered hole; bunkers pinch the fairway at about 260 starting on the right and there are two up the left for those who don’t properly shape their ball into this left-to-right sloping fairway. While it wasn’t too hard to hit the fairway on this late-winter day (I still failed), I think that it’d be very difficult when the course plays firm in the summer.

The second is uphill to the largest and most heavily contoured green on the course. I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

The eleventh is the third drivable par 4 and is definitely the strangest of the bunch. It features another short, uphill drive over a bunker to a blind fairway on the other side. I’m not sure that I’d recommend trying to drive this green even if you’ve got the length because the line with the green is protected by several stocky pine trees. I’m a bit torn about these trees because if you pushed your drive, you’d already be penalized by the heather over there. My preference would be to leave one or two of them and remove the rest so that there was still some aerial hazard without completely blocking the path or chance of recovery.

If you lay up, it’s important to keep your ball in the right center of the fairway because the green is very small. Especially if the flag were on the left side of the green, it’d be very difficult to play to it from the left side of the fairway.

The long par 4 twelfth is clearly another Colt hole because it features his signature shelf green and diagonal approaching bunkers. It’s important to keep your drive near the bunkers up the left side because the approach shot can get quite long and the angle very awkward from the right side. The green is protected by a mound in the front-right and the drop-off on the right is quite steep. Apparently Park Jr.’s twelfth green was on the flatter ground to the right of this green. Yet another great hole.

After a fairly uninteresting drop shot par 3, we come to a short par 5 that I just love. It’s a pretty tough driving hole as the fairway narrows at the bunker, which is just 240 from the tips. The second is blind over a diagonal string of bunkers that angle from short-right to long-left, between 90 and 175 yards short of the green. While they shouldn’t be an issue off a decent drive, they make the second very interesting for shorter hitters.

For longer hitters, the bigger issue is the bunkers left and right on the approach to the green. You have to be precise if you’re going for the green or you’re likely to have a 40 yard bunker shot for your third. The green is one of my favorite on the course as is exemplary of the Park Jr. greens, resting simply on the flat land. A wonderfully simple green site after several challenging ones.

The very long par 3 fifteenth offers three choices of teeing grounds. From the left markers, it’s about 215 to the front but the green is open. Then there are a set of markers just behind the fourteenth green which play a little shorter, but require you to skirt the front right green side bunker. The toughest are the set on the right that play about 220 to the front and require you to hit a fade or carry the front right green side bunker. The green is simple and flat and the sharp edges on the bunkers made this green complex look like something out of the Melbourne sand belt. Very good long par 3.

We close with three medium-long par 4s. The sixteenth seems to be channeling Trent Jones’ soon-to-be-former redesign of Oakland Hills, with clusters of fairway bunkers left and right. More interesting is the ring of fairway bunkers that surround the last 60 yards of the uphill approach to the green. The green appears to be another Park Jr.: largest and laying simply on a gradual upslope.

While I’ve talked a lot about the Old’s great drivable par 4s, there are even more outstanding long par 4s and the seventeenth might be my favorite of the bunch. The best drive here will skirt or carry the right fairway bunkers (it’s about 240 over the most distant one). If you hedge left or pull your drive, you can easily put it into the clump of pine trees left of the fairway.

The approach is a beauty to an open green over a large bunker about 40 yards short and is framed by the eighteenth hole and the clubhouse. I’d imagine that when the course is playing firm, many will have to just carry the bunker so that their ball doesn’t run through the green.

You drive uphill and (hopefully) between two well-placed bunkers on eighteen. The approach is over another diagonal string of fairway bunkers to a green that angles from front-left to back-right and is protected by several bunkers to the sides and a mighty oak tree in the back.

When people ask me what my favorite course in England was, I always say Sunningdale's Old Course. I just loved it. I’ve never played a course with such variety. One thing that I missed on some of the top shelf London heathland courses that others around the country had in spades is quirk. While they’re none the worse for it, Colt’s courses always have a polished, modern feel. But probably in large part because of its mixed origins, the Old Course possesses enough quirk to compare favorably to some of my favorite James Braid courses. To me, that sets it apart from Swinley Forest or St. George’s Hill, which have most of the brilliance of the Old, but little of its strangeness.

I don’t think that the Old Course would pose much of a challenge to the top players today. While it’s only par 70, it’s also only about 6,650 yards from the tips. But who cares? At least 80% of the golfers who play almost any course won’t be single digit handicaps. And with a few very hard holes like 2, 10, and 15, the Old can stand up just fine to most of them too. It’s actually a perfect mix of holes to test the game of a shorter-hitting single digit handicap…like me (I wasn't up to the challenge on this day).

But regardless of your skill level, every golfer who is going to be in London should drop a few hundred pounds and play this course. Actually they should drop a few hundred more and play both the Old and the New on the same day. I can hardly imagine a better 36 hole day of golf.

While I arrived in London in September 2015, I didn’t start playing golf until February 2016 when I decided to take a short trip to the southeast coast to play a few dream courses, Royal St. George’s and Royal Cinque Ports. I enjoyed the experience so much that when I got back to London, I immediately started plotting which of the many great London heathland courses to play first. While almost all of these clubs are private, with a few exceptions, ‘private’ in the UK means the same as ‘semi-private’ in the US—a club that has members but is opened for limited public play.

So I went first for the what are supposed to be the best of the bunch: the two courses at Sunningdale Golf Club. Both courses consistently make a variety of world top 100 lists and the Old Course seems to be the pick of many as the best heathland course. I established a habit early on of playing at least 36 holes a day and while the days aren’t at their longest in early March, the courses were empty enough and golfers in the UK play fast enough (and readily let you play through if you’re faster) to get in 18 holes on the New before lunch and then turn around and easily get in 18 on the Old after lunch.

What’s a heathland course? This term seems to be getting thrown around a lot without being given a very clear definition. The term ‘heath’ come from the heath family of plants Ericaceae, which includes rhododendrons, mountain laurels, and heather. The common characteristic of this family is that most of the members are acid-loving and their presence is an indicator of acidic and often low-nutrient soil. ’Heathland’ is the acidic dry land in northern Europe where two species of heather, common heather (Calluna vulgaris) and bell heather (Erica cinerea) are common. Most crops grow poorly in these soils. But they usually make good land for golf as the soils are often light and sandy—good conditions for growing rye grass and fescue. So then a heathland course is a course on heathland, which the presence of heather and a few other plants (holly, chestnut, Scots pine) indicate. We don’t have heather in the US, but the soils at places like Sand Valley and Forest Dunes are similar and some of the indigenous plants on those courses are reasonably close analogues to heather—especially the unrelated beach heather at Sand Valley.

There’s been a lot of debate about which of the two courses at Sunningdale is superior and while the standard answer was always the Old, there seems to be more questioning this lately. While the Old Course was the work of Willie Park Jr. with significant renovations by Harry Colt, the New Course is Colt with revisions by Tom Simpson. I won’t go into the history of the course, which has been pored over on sites like Golf Club Atlas.

But after playing the New Course, you can tell which parts of the Old Course are Colt and which are Park Jr. Colt liked to site his greens into hillside and there’s a lot of almost modern shaping around them. I’ll get into this a bit more when I discuss the Old Course, but while I usually value architectural consistency, I preferred the mix of Colt’s complex green sites/shaping and Park Jr.’s more minimalist approach on the Old. And while I usually like blind shots and both courses have several of them, I found the New’s repeated blind drives to narrow fairways surrounded by heather (there are three in a row on the front nine) a bit excessive. Both are great golf courses, but in line with the old consensus, I prefer the Old.


The long par 4 first is a good, but tough hole. There’s ample room to drive the ball, but the best approach is from the high left side of the fairway. While it wasn’t difficult to stick a drive up this on this soft late winter day, you’d want to be careful about trying to place a drive up there in the summer because the further that you go, the more that the woods encroach on the left. In what’ll become a theme, the green is narrow, but deep and is a tough target for such a long par 4.

The par 3 second was my first introduction to what we might call a signature hole type for both Colt and English golf generally: the uphill par 3. This green is the first of several where we see Colt’s distinctive, almost modern shaping, with the green built up on a pad and framed by mounds. I prefer Colt’s occasional mounding to the more symmetric (and artificial looking) mounding of 80s and 90s architects, but Colt’s shaping around his green complexes definitely looks like an early predecessor to me.

The medium-length par 4 third is our first serious introduction to heather. It’ll catch your drive if you try to cut too much off the right side here and as I learned a few holes later, you don’t want to be hitting out of it—especially on such a cold and wet day. The approach to the green is a beauty, with three staggered bunkers. And while Colt’s green contours tend to be pretty mild (that was another theme across his courses), this one was subtle but quite good—although it’s hard to tell in this picture.

The long par 4 fourth commences a three-hole stretch to which I can’t think of a clear superior. It starts with a long, gently right-doglegging par 4. To be sure, they could really use some tree clearing on the right side, especially off the tee. But the uphill approach to the green is excellent, giving ample room to run the ball onto the green while still requiring care to avoid the encroaching heather on the left.

The short fifth is one of my favorite par 3s in England. The setting is lovely and the green is very challenging, with a spine running left to right across the middle creating a receptive front portion but requiring great control to any shot played to the back. Although they’re covered in heather, we can see in the third photo more of Colt’s mounding behind this green.

That brings us to the par 5 sixth, one of the most justly famous holes in England. The hole plays through a sea of heather and the views to the right over the open heath were stunning, even on this dreary day. There’s a strong argument to be made that the club should remove a lot of the trees on this and the other open heath holes although they are on commonly-owned land (the Chobham Common, a great place for hiking or walking your dog) and I’m not sure whether it has the right to do so.

This was also where I got my first experience hitting out of heather. The best analogy that I can think of—if you know American landscaping plants—is trying to hit out of a creeping juniper. Heather, especially when wet as on this day, is very tough and ropey. I tried to hit a 9-iron about 120 yards to lay up on my second but my club got tied up in the heather and the result looked like a shank that went about 80 yards into a creek.

While my shot was naive and incompetent, the aforementioned creek is an important part of what makes this hole interesting as it cuts into the fairway about 125 yards short of the green and forms a diagonal hazard up the right side of the lay up area. There isn’t much need to challenge it if you’re laying up because the left side of the fairway is higher and flatter, but it’s a good hazard for those who go for this elevated, two-tiered green and don’t have the distance to carry it all the way.

The medium-length par 4 seventh begins a stretch of three holes of which I wasn’t such a fan. Each features a blind drive to a narrow fairway. The landing area on seven bends to the right and it’s easy to run through the fairway on the left (as I learned). The green is on a diagonal from front-left to back-right and is protected by a bunker on its right side. Although I really liked the shaping around the green, I wasn’t a huge fan of the fact that the optimal angle into is is from the heather left of the fairway (hey, at least I left myself the optimal angle on my drive…).

While the eighth is also blind and doglegs to the right, the fairway is a bit wider. The approach is uphill to another deep, narrow green built into the side of a hill, a Colt specialty (although this might be a Simpson green?).

The long par 4 ninth is another up-and-over blind drive and while this time the fairway runs straight, it’s also quite narrow between a heather-covered hill on the left and pines/heather on the right. It’d be nice if the club could remove some of the pines on the right side of the fairway on the approach to the green because the optimal angle to the green should be from the right side of the fairway and the trees partially block this line.

The weather was becoming pretty dismal by the time that I reached the tee on the long par 3 tenth. Fortunately there was a halfway house with a hot cup of coffee and a nice sausage roll behind the green. In Colt’s original routing of the New Course, the ninth hole finished well to the left of the current tenth tee and the tenth tee was on the hill to the left, playing down to this green. I bet that the hole would make more sense from up there because from these tees, it’s a very long (~220 yards) shot to the most well-bunkered green on the course with no room to run the ball onto the green.

Eleven is a bit disconcerting as the landing area is wide but you can’t see any of it. The fairway winds to the left and a good line for most good players is just to the inside of the trees—it’s about a 215 yard carry to the green on this line. Long hitters can just go over them and leave themselves a little wedge. I loved the simplicity of this green but not that while it just sits on the land (and slopes front-to-back with it), Colt still built a lot of little mounds around it.

Twelve is a good driving hole, with heather running diagonally up the left side. I don’t think that there’s much reason to challenge the left side though because the hole is fairly short and center-right leaves a better angle. The green is another Colt special, benched into a right-to-left sloping hill with heather covering the slope on the low side.

Thirteen is the course’s longest par 5, about 560 yards from the back tees. The drive is downhill to one of the more generous fairways on the course but the most interesting thing about this hole is the bunker in the center of the fairway about 115 yards short of the green. It’s one of the better-placed centerline bunkers that I’ve seen. The green complex is minimalist for this course and is best approached from the left side of the fairway.

I found the 190 yard par 3 fourteenth with mounds framing the back of the green to be a very modern-looking par 3.

The medium-long par 4 fifteenth is a very interesting hole, semi-blind off the tee to a fairway that runs diagonally from left to right with a pond in the corner of the dogleg on the left side. While a bit awkward, I found this to be an excellent driving hole and one of the better uses of water as a driving hazard that I’ve seen. There’s plenty of room to play left of it, but this makes the uphill approach to another narrow/deep green longer and more difficult. This is one green where the shaping around the green was a bit too modern-looking for my liking, although it blends in well with the surroundings from the fairway.

The last three holes on the New Course are pretty disappointing. They start with a medium-length par 4 that doglegs gently to the right. I do like the bunkering on the approach to the green and the diagonal pattern that starts well short of the green is something that we’ll see more on the Colt holes next door and especially at St. George’s Hill.

The par 3 seventeenth, with its built-up green and mounds at the back, reminded me of a nice course in Michigan. I didn't find the two par 3s on the back nine to be a strength of the New Course.

The eight is a short-but-tight par 5. In fact, the opening and closing holes of both the New and Old Courses are crammed into a corridor that was tight enough to require a fence of the left side of this tee (you can kind of see it in this picture) to prevent those on the eighteenth tee of the Old Course from getting whacked (definitely the only thing about Sunningdale that reminded me of a local muni). Although I didn’t much care for the hole, there’s no denying that the bunkering and shaping around the green are very well done.

The New Course is a very tough test of golf, especially off the tee. It might be the toughest driving course that I played during my time in the UK. There are a lot of blind tee shots, the heather is thicker here than most of the other heathland courses, and there are a lot of encroaching trees. Coupled with the narrow, well-defended greens, I found this to be one of the most difficult of the heathland courses. I wish that they’d lose some trees especially on the holes around the turn because (1) it would open up the dramatic heathland landscape and (2) would help distinguish New from the more wooded Old. I’m not sure about how much work they can do on common land. What the course really needs—although the residents in the surrounding multi-million £ homes wouldn’t like it—is a good fire to restore the open heath.

While it’s undeniable that the New has some great holes (esp. 4-6), I was left wondering a bit what everyone thinks is so special about it. Maybe I need a few more trips around in drier, more pleasant conditions. The New reminds me a bit of Crystal Downs in northern Michigan in that the front nine is excellent with several world class holes, but the back nine is a bit of a letdown. I liked 10, 12, 13, and especially 15 but with the exception of maybe the latter, none struck me as a great hole. And I don’t believe that I’m the first person to note that the finishing stretch is a bit of a disappointment.

But while I’m skeptical that this is a world top 100 course, I haven’t played enough of them to render any kind of judgment on that. I can decide the question ‘is this an excellent golf course?’ And my answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ Until they restore the Addington, it’d be one of my top 5 London heathland courses. I didn’t feel that it had as many great holes as Colt’s nearby Swinley Forest or St. George’s Hill, but the best holes here are as good as anything on those.

Even if it’s a bit much once or twice, I liked Colt’s shaping. Of all of the different architects’ courses that I played in the UK (Fowler, Braid, Park Jr., etc.), you can most see the future of shaping in Colt’s work. He wasn’t afraid to move dirt, building up and shaping the edges of his green complexes to blend them in with their surroundings. While 80s and 90s American architects got completely carried away with this, there’s sometimes reason to do a lot of shaping around greens. When you want to build greens into hillsides as Colt liked to do, you need to do a good amount of shaping to (1) make them playable and then (2) make them blend into their surroundings. While we’ll see, I think, even better examples of this next door and at St. George’s Hill, Colt’s style is on full display here and marries well with the stunning heathland landscape.

I moved to London in September 2015 and the first time that I left the city after that was in December of that year, when I flew out of Gatwick Airport. The train to Gatwick goes through East Croydon, which is a pretty dismal place to most Brits, but for me it was exciting because that’s where the Addington is. I’ve been intrigued by the Addington since I first read about it in Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide some 15 years earlier. He made it sound very quirky, very English eccentric…completely unlike any course with which I had experience playing golf in the US. The par is less than 70, there are blind shots, crossover holes, etc. Plus there were several holes, like the twelfth and the thirteenth, which looked unique and spectacular.

So the following spring when I started my quest to play all of the golf courses worth playing within a few hours’ train ride of London, the Addington was one of my first stops. What surprised me most about the Addington was actually how not-quirky it was. It’s a really strong test of golf. It was also my first realization that par less-than-70 doesn’t mean that the course is really any shorter or easier. The Addington is 6,300 yards and par 69 from the back tees but it plays as long and as challenging as any 6,800 yard course with which I’m familiar. Later, when I played Rye, Swinley Forest, and West Sussex, I learned that this wasn’t a fluke. These courses—all of which are under 6,500 yards—are plenty long and strong enough to challenge all but the longest hitters (Rye might be the most difficult course that I’ve played). These courses all have at least five par 3s and in each case, 2 or 3 that make you hit long clubs.

The Addington has six par 3s from the wedge-postage stamp 120 yard eleventh up to the mighty 240 yard thirteenth and everything in between. I think that there’s more variety in these par 3s than on any other course that I’ve played. It’s certainly on my short list of courses with the best set of par 3s. The par three par 5s and the par 4s have similar variety. The Addington’s first great strength is its almost flawless composition—I don’t think that I’ve played a course with such a perfect mix of hole lengths. If nothing else, at least this should appeal to American golfers, who see ‘it makes you use all the clubs in the bag’ as a major virtue of a golf course.

But there’s a downside—of every course that I played in the UK, the Addington was most in need of tree removal. Actually, it was probably the only course that needed serious tree removal—the heathland clubs have been pretty good about tree management. But some of the holes, especially the aforementioned twelfth and the great sixteenth needed it badly. Fortunately, the new team of Mikes Clayton, DeVries, and Frank Pont is on the job. Pont has done an excellent job with restoration work on some of the other London clubs, including Camberley Heath and Tandridge and although I didn’t see them before their restorations, I’m pretty sure that neither had anywhere near the potential of the Addington. By the time of my last visit in summer 2018, the Addington had cleared out trees between the claustrophobic eighth and the ninth and the results were impressive. If they give the rest of the course that kind of treatment, the Addington should challenge for a spot as one of London’s top 5 heathland courses.

Apart from its inherent potential, another reason to restore the Addington is that it’s one of the few remaining examples of the work of architect J.F. Abercromby. He ran the club in its early days and was apparently a bit of an autocrat. But hey, Germany, Japan, and China all experienced their economic miracles under autocracy. His other notable courses are Coombe Hill (which I haven’t played), Knole Park, and Worplesdon and while there’s certainly a debate to have about it now, I don’t think that there’s any question that properly restored, the Addington would be the best of the bunch. I love Knole Park and Worplesdon but they wouldn’t have anything to match the drama of a properly restored twelfth or sixteenth hole at the Addington.

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The Addington starts with quirk rather than drama: a short, uphill par 3. This wasn’t originally the first hole because the clubhouse was supposed to be up the hill behind the green. While I don’t think it’s the best kind of starting hole, it’s a very good par 3, with a deep but narrow green.

The second hole is a long, tough par 5, doglegging to the right but with a fairway that slopes left. The Addington doesn’t have a ton of bunkers but those that it does have tend to be very well-placed. There’s one about 230 off the tee on the left to catch a pull or a straight drive that kicks left (and saves you from going in the woods) and another about 175 yards short of the green near the apex of the hill to mess with your second if you’ve hit a poor drive. The green is beautiful—it just sits there, sloping with the land off to the back left. The mowing lines around it could use some work, but that’s an easy fix.

We’re getting another lesson about English golf courses with the tough, uphill par 3 third: that English architects liked to use par 3s to climb hills. We’ll see this over and over again, especially as I start to review Colt’s London-area courses. While the exposed areas of the course were very firm (as you’ll see from the color of the fairways in some of my later pictures), this hole is surrounded by trees and was soft. That’s unfortunately because it’s really tough to carry the ball the 200 yards uphill onto this green and the hole could benefit from a firm approach. I’d imagine that a good number of these trees will be coming down in the restoration and the additional sun should help firm the ground up.

Four is the first of many tough, long par 4s on the Addington. This is probably the one hole where the trees are a net benefit. You want to aim at the end of the tree line near the green on the left side here. If you’re on the right side, you’ll have to shape your ball around the trees that encroach from the right. I hope that Clayton et al keep enough trees here to retain this ‘goal post effect’ on the approach because otherwise it’s just a straight-away par 4. Still, you could save two clumps of trees nearest the green and lose the rest.

The fifth is another strong par 4 that doglegs gently right-to-left back around the fourth. The bunker short-right is perfectly placed to mess with your second off a poor drive but like several other bunkers on the course, could use a bit of aesthetic enhancement.

The sixth is a short dogleg left which has one notable feature of which I didn’t get a picture: the pit  bunker short-right of the green. You really shouldn’t be in here but if you hit a poor drive to the right and a weak approach, that’s where you might end up.

The short (~145 yard) par 3 seventh is a beauty, especially when the course is baked out and the heather is in bloom as in this photograph. The green sits in a manmade bowl…a bit of a forerunner to the 80s/90s American mound-surrounded courses (we’ll see more of this on some of Colt’s courses). Needless to say, it’s much less unattractive here.

If there were ever a question mark hole, it’s the Addington’s 400 yard eighth. The drive is straight uphill to a blind fairway, which doglegs left but slopes right. Many won’t even be able to reach the fairway. If you go more than about 220, the fairway narrows and runs down into the woods on both sides. The second demands accuracy too, especially in firm conditions like these. The cut down most of the trees on the right between my summer 2017 and 2018 visits so now you may not lose your ball if you hit it over there, but will have to play 50 yards blind uphill out of a valley.

The dogleg left ninth features two shots over the bridged ravines for which the Addington is famous. This hole played completely different on different visits to the Addington, the first of which was in April 2016 when the course was soft and the second two were in the summer when the course was…well, the color of the fairway in the first picture here tells you how the course was. The second ravine cuts the fairway off at about 250 on the left side and in April, I hit a nice 2-hybrid out there, it stuck in the fairway, and I had 150 yards. Straightforward.

I think I played this hole 5 or 6 times on my two summer visits…and I only managed to hit the fairway once, when I clubbed down to like a 6 iron. Several of those shots with my 4 iron were actually pretty good, but the fairway is convex and they all bounced through the fairway into the heather that separates this fairway from the tenth, Long story short…summer British fairways can make you look like a long drive champion or an idiot. I’m sure that Clayton et al will remove the little trees that the club has (‘have’ if you’re British…) planted between this and the tenth fairway.

The approach is beautiful (especially in summer with the tan grass and the heather in bloom) but the green is convex and quite tricky to hit.

I’d recommend going into the chute of trees behind the ninth green and playing the tenth from the back tee—otherwise you have to hook your drive around some pine trees. It’s a great driving hole from back there, about 220 to reach the upper part of the fairway. The second plays a bit longer than it seems. Again, the bunkers could use some work to match the visual drama of the course’s other elements.

One type of hole that I’ve definitely become less of a fan of over the years is the postage stamp par 3 surrounded by bunkers. It’s kind of an obvious thing to do and half the golfers will just go back-and-forth across the green from bunker to bunker. But the eleventh at the Addington might be my favorite of the type because the green is deep and the bunkers are at the front and back so that you don’t have to play a bunker shot into the shallowest aspect of the green with another on the other side.

So this is a big part of what you came for, the twelfth hole. Definitely one of the more famous holes of the British heathland courses and according to many people, one of the country’s great holes.

Not according to me. At least not in the summer of 2018. It starts with a blind where the fairway runs out at about 235 yards. In April, it was a simple long iron lay-up. But like the ninth, it was impossible in the summer. On my second visit, I played with some members who said that a lot of them just hit a driver to try to get to the bottom of the hole and if they lose the ball, oh well. Because you can lose your ball off a good lay up too as I found out.

This hole is famous for two things: (1) its majestic approach shot and (2) its tiered fairway. That aforementioned 235 yards is to the end of the main fairway. After that, the hole runs downhill but there are several tiers of fairway, almost like this were a par 3. Now this could be a perfectly functional oddity…if the ball could roll between the tiers. Instead, the slopes are covered with long grass and heather, so unless you get lucky and catch the steps or a spot where the grass is thin, you’ll get stuck on the hill between the tiers.

Now all that has a simple fix: just run a lawn mower over the heather and long grass. The justly famous approach shot is another matter. When you see old photographs of the course, none of the trees on the left were there. They make the 220 yard approach very awkward but they’re guilty of an even greater crime: if you have a look in the woods over there, you’ll see that the trees are growing on a bunch of mounds, just like those short of the green. Then you realize what this hole was originally about: the area left of the green was open and you could bank the ball off those mounds onto the green from the left. And this would have been a vital option in the summer when, free of trees, the ground was firm and fast because a shot to the right would run off down the (if those trees were removed) thirteenth. Simply put, I don’t think that there’s a hole in the world as much in need of tree removal as the twelfth at the Addington.

On top of all that, it’s one of the most interesting greens on the course. So while I don’t think that the version of the hole that I saw was very good, I’ve never seen a hole that had so much unfulfilled promise. If Clayton et al restore this hole the way that I suspect they will, it will be one of the greatest holes on a heathland course.

After all that, the next hole is…just one of the most famous long par 3s in the world. I have to admit to being not as big a fan of this hole as most seem to be. I like it when there’s ample room to run the ball onto a long par 3 and that’s pretty hard to do here because the slope up to the green is quite steep. One possibility would be to cut the trees down right of the green and maintain some of this slope as short grass, but while the trees weren’t there in the old photos that I’ve seen, it didn’t look like the hill was short grass. Some holes are just meant to be hard and I’m pretty sure that this was one of them.

On a clear day, you can see the London skyline in the background from the tee of the subtle, but excellent medium-short par 4 fourteenth. The genius here is in the slope of the fairway. While the drive is wide-open, unless you keep your ball tight up the left side, the slope will carry your ball off to the right onto the fifteenth hole. From there, you’ll have an uphill, blind shot over a bunker. If you keep your drive up the left as we see below, it’s a simple approach.

The fifteenth is another of the Addington’s tough long par 4s. The encroaching trees make the fairway look narrower than it is. It’s pretty wide open and you should take advantage of that by making your best trying-to-impress-the-trackman swing…because the second is quite uphill and plays long.

While the twelfth may be the hole that’s in most need of tree removal in the entire world, the short par 5 sixteenth is probably in the top 10 as well. I suspect that this would be one of the most visually spectacular holes in the world if they cut down all the trees because it plays in the same direction as number fourteen, so you’d see the London skyline, and the land is rolling and wild, with a green perched over a heather-filled ravine.

But unlike the twelfth, it was still an excellent hole in its 2018 suboptimal presentation. The drive is great—wide open on the right but if you hit out there, you won’t be able to reach the green in two and may even have an awkward lay up around trees. But you can also use the slope to sling a draw well down the fairway from where it’ll just be a mid-long iron into the green. That shot is currently claustrophobic, with the trees on the right really choking the last 200 yards of the hole out. I didn’t get a photo of it for some reason, but the shot from the lay up area to the green is a beauty.

N.B. there’s some interesting shaping in the trees to the left of driving zone which I suspect was a bunker. It’s certainly a good place for one, right at the corner of the dogleg. I asked the members that I played with if it had been one and they said no, but the trees in there are at least 50 years old so if I’m right, it probably hasn’t been a bunker since pre-WWII. I’m sure that Clayton et al will get to the bottom of this.

The seventeenth is a lovely medium-long par 3 with a nice bit of English quirk: you play over the sixteenth green. The bunkers short of the green are very attractive (a nice model for the rest of the bunkers) but the important thing to note is that they’re well short of the green. You’ve got a good 30 yards of fairway short that you can use to run the ball onto the green. This nicely balances the two other longer par 3s, nos. three and thirteen, which are both very exacting.

The long par 4 eighteenth isn’t one of the more interesting holes at the Addington but it’s a very good challenge. There’s a bunker on the left about 230 from the tips which, according to the members, catches quite a few balls. The fairway slopes right-to-left and I can imagine that it’d catch a lot of short hitters’ balls when it’s playing firm in the summer. The approach is to an elevated green and plays a good club uphill.

I played the Addington more than any other course during my three years in London: seven times in three visits. So I got to know the course pretty well. Despite the issues with the presentation, which are the most significant of any course that I played in the UK, it’s an excellent test of golf. The trees, slopes in the fairway, and, in the summer, the firmness make it a very stern test of driving. I guess that there’s some concern that some of this might be lost if they do a wholesale tree removal, but I’d imagine that Clayton et al will leave a few to keep some of the challenge. But I think the improvement in the aesthetics would be worth making it a bit easier off the tee. The Addington is a dramatic, hilly property and I suspect that it’d be one of the most visually spectacular courses in London (where there’s some good competition) if they opened up vistas across the course.

Of every course that I’ve played, there probably isn’t one that would elicit stronger opinions from golfers than Mike Strantz’s Tobacco Road. It has to be one of the boldest courses ever designed, with fairways winding through 40 foot high mounds, greens located in 15X100 ft. trenches, and bunkers that look like they must have been shaped by the air force. In addition to being completely original, some of these holes are absolutely brilliant. Among well-traveled people, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s pretty good agreement that the best 3 or 4 holes here would hang with the best 3 or 4 holes on almost any course in the world.

But Tobacco Road also has some of the worst holes that I’ve ever played. Several greens are extremely shallow (like 15-20 ft.) and very wide (in some cases 60-80 yards) with junk short and long. In addition to being, in my opinion, aesthetically ugly, these shots are almost impossible to play for higher handicap golfers. Even if part of the green is a bit deeper, if you successfully play to it, you’ll have a 70 or 80 ft. putt where you can’t go at the hole. If they go at the hole unsuccessfully, the next few shots are likely to be back-and-forth across the green from unforgiving hardpan sand (all of the course’s bunkers are waste bunkers). This, plus blindness and narrowness on the way to several greens (but usually not in the driving zone) makes Tobacco Road one of the hardest courses for high handicap golfers that I’ve seen.

Low handicap golfers, however, are likely to tear this place up. The landing areas for good drives are all very wide and you’ll be playing a short iron to all these wide, shallow greens. As long and the course isn’t wet or you pick your irons clean (even though it’s on pure sand, there are a lot of soggy catchment basins), the low handicapper should shoot well because the course isn’t very long. Especially given their proximity, I see this course as sort-of an anti-Pinehurst no.2; extremely hard for the high handicapper, but easy for the low handicapper. Lots of trouble in front, but usually less to the sides. Often no reasonable place for a high handicapper to miss and if there is, it usually isn’t somewhere in front of the green.


We find another of the course’s anti-Pinehurst no. 2—in fact anti-Donald Ross—aspects at the first hole: a long, difficult par 5 with potentially several blind shots. More a kick in the balls than a gentle handshake. And also a very good example of a hole that’s tough for high handicappers but not for low handicappers. It’s a pretty noteworthy drive—between two 40 ft. tall dunes. It’s only about 210 yards to get past the first dune on the right from near the tips. But if you only carry the ball 150 yards, you’re going to have to navigate the probably 20 ft. wide opening between them.

If you’ve hit a good drive up the left, you’ll have a partial view through a cleft in another dune ridge that crosses the fairway about 120 yards short of the green. Although you have to have played the course or taken a look over the ridge, it’s a great second shot for good players because the fairway on the other side is wide, but there’s a huge advantage to being up the left side. The left side of the green is open while the right side is obscured by another ridge with bunkers. I thought that the green was the most beautiful on the course; it sits gently on the land and runs front-to-back with the general slope. Despite the difficulties for higher handicappers, I thought that this was a great hole and I was really excited to see what comes next.

The second hole continues with the visual confusion. You drive over a huge waste bunker, which depending on which of the back tees you play, is a 220-240 yard carry. If you can’t carry it (in which case, you should move up a set of tees), you have to play way out to the right and will have a completely blind shot. But this drive is one of many examples of something that I don’t really like: if you can make a carry, the fairway is unmissably wide. If you can’t, either the shot’s unplayable or you have to take some bizarre alternative route.

The third is probably my favorite par 3 on the course. The green is almost 60 yards deep but it’s very interesting, with a large swale in the middle third and a ridge on the right that enables you to work the ball to back hole locations. You have to be accurate, but the fact that the whole green is accessible and the interesting contours make this one of the better, and less controversial holes on the course.

Another one of the best and least controversial holes is the dogleg left, short par 5 fourth. It’s just a great hole. The dominant feature here is the huge waste bunker that runs from the landing area to the green. The closer you keep your ball to it, the easier it will be to reach the green in two. But the bunker cuts into the lay-up zone so if you drive it out to the right, you’ll have to figure out how much of the bunker you can carry. The further right you go, the blinder the shot (but it’s wide open) and the more awkward the angle for the approach. If you’re too far right, an oak tree right of the green will partially block a shot to the back of the green. If you go for it in two, you can use the slopes short and right of the green to run your ball onto the green. It’s a great hole that works for everyone.

I think that the short par 4 fifth is also a great hole, but there’s some serious danger out there. You can go straight for the green to the left with only about a 210-230 yard carry over the sand. Again, the fairway to the right is very wide and you only need to go about 200-215 if you lay-up. But the green is severe; shallow from the lay-up area, with a false front that’ll take your ball 25 yards back off the front of the green. There’s a reasonable amount of room up there, but make sure that you take enough club and err a bit right.

After the first five holes, I thought that I might be playing one of the small handful of best courses that I’ve played. My view started to change at the short par 3 sixth. It starts with the routing--the sixth green and seventh tees are right behind the fifth green, but we must walk ~150 yards back to get to the sixth tees. Then the hole features one of the course’s unfortunate signature features: a green that’s about 15 ft. deep in many places and 60 yards wide. And there are about 2 acres of tee boxes. A lot of people might like the flexibility that this brings, but it just strikes me as an architect not being sure about what hole he wanted to design, so he tried to incorporate every design into one. In any case, if you’re unsure about your distances, play to the deeper left side of the green.

The par 4 seventh isn’t a bad hole, but not my favorite. The fairway is blind, but it’s about 75 yards wide. The objective is to drive it as far as you can, so maybe the idea was ‘let’s see how hard you can swing and how solid of contact you can make under uncertainty.’ The green is large and undulating and while a long drive is probably the most important thing, being up the left side is good too.

I’m also not a fan of the long par 3 eighth. The green is hook shaped from shot left to long right around a bunker. There’s a huge tier in the left side and the back right is very shallow over a bunker. Back left pins aren’t bad, but you pretty much either get the distance right or you have a very hard second shot.

I’ve heard about and read a lot of complaining concerning the par 4 ninth. And it’s completely justified. The hole bottlenecks right where the high handicapper is going to land their drive but beyond that, it’s wide open. But the real trouble is on the approach; the green is up a waste bunker-covered hill and sits in a saddle about 30 feet wide and 40 yards deep. There’s effectively zero width to the green but the area is concave so if you can get your ball up there, you’ll have a decent shot. But that’s the problem—it’s very difficult to get up there. The lay-up area short-left is too small for higher handicappers to hit with any consistency. I would imagine that a pretty high percentage of golfers don’t finish this hole.

The long par 4 tenth is more straight-forward, doglegging right along a massive waste bunker. The green is open from the front-left, so it’s actually best to hit a long drive to the outside of the dogleg. The green is large and one of the more interesting on the course.

The par 5 eleventh hole seems to be a lot of people’s favorite at Tobacco Road and I think that there’s good reason for that. The drive is wide open with a waste bunker running down its right side. It’s natural to assume that it’s best to keep your drive close to this bunker and that’s correct. The approach to the green from here is quite something. The bunker on the approach to the green looks like it was shaped by a few B-52s. If you go for it, you’d better hit it solid (although I was able to get out of the bunker…).

The lay-up is really interesting because there are a few options. The safest is to keep it about 90-100 yards short of the green. If you go further, you have to carry part of the bomb crater bunker. It looks like there isn’t a lot of room up there, but there is. And if you go a bit further right, you can run the ball onto the front left of the green. It’s a great hole because there’s a lot of drama and there are a lot of reasonable but interesting options for everyone from the low to the high handicapper.

The par 4 twelfth gives lower handicappers a taste of what higher handicappers have been experiencing throughout: the fairway narrows right where you want to land your drive. Unless you lay up, you need to be very accurate or be able to carry it 250-270. The green has a huge waste bunker and ridge on its left and it’s very important to approach from the right side. Because that’s impossible unless you’ve driven it 300 or are approaching from a waste bunker, play to the front right.

Despite the severity so far, Tobacco Road doesn’t start to get weird until the par 5 thirteenth. The drive is diagonal along a bunker on the right, but you always need to keep it under about 280 because on any line, the ball can run through the fairway. The second is blind and confusing, but just pick a club that gets you 100-140 yards from the green—it’s wide open at this distance. If you lay up closer, you’ll have to keep it left of the bunker that you can see on the right (you can’t see it, but there’s room there).

The green is in a trench that, continuing the war analogies, looks like something out of WWI. And your score is about as likely to get slaughtered here. It’s maybe 20 ft. deep, 60 feet wide, and except for about a 15 ft. wide slice on the right, completely blind. It’s very difficult to judge distance here; I hit what I though was a great shot and it got stuck on one of the mounds short of the green. Oh well.

The downhill par 3 fourteenth over a pond is really pretty—but tough. It’s quite short if the flag is in the front left, but the green becomes a very small target for the ~170 yard shot if the flag is in the back.

After playing the fourteenth hole, I had one of my more special experiences on a golf course: I got completely lost trying to find the fifteenth hole. If you follow the cart path, the next hole you come to is the eighteenth…and to be honest, it might be best if you just continued on, played it, and finished with a 15 hole round. Because once you do find the fifteenth hole, you’re at the beginning of probably the worst three hole stretch that I’ve played.

Actually, it starts well. The drive on fifteen is one of the most attractive on the course. You can only see part of the fairway, but enough so that it isn’t too intimidating (there’s also plenty of room over the trees on the right). Then things go completely wrong. Again, the culprit is a green that’s about 25 ft. deep and this time, about 70 yards wide. But the real problem here is that it isn’t just a wide strip—it’s sort-of S-shaped. And it’s fronted by a variety of bunkers, mounds, and tufts of grass. So you have absolutely no idea where you can hit the ball. It’s impossible to get a yardage because the distance to the middle of the green gives you no sense of the distance to the far wings. And even if you did know the distance, you wouldn’t have any sense of where you can miss and what the distances are to hit the green if you miss slightly left or right.

To be fair, when I played, the flag was on the left, which is probably the most confusing part of the green to hit to. If the flag is on the right, it might be a little bit more comprehensible, especially if you’re in the left side of the fairway. But—and I’m generally a huge defender of blind shots—there’s too much uncertainty in playing to any flag and nowhere to play safe. You can play to a more open area, but the next shot might be impossible.

A peculiar amenity tells you quite a bit about the short par 4 sixteenth—a course-appointed ball spotter on a dune on the corner of the dogleg left who comes and tells you where to hit the ball. And you’ll need him, probably even if you’ve played the course before, because it looks like you’re hitting into a sea of rough and bunkers. The best line is the left edge of the nearest line of trees in the distance. There’s about 60 yards deep of fairway to hit to here but if you go right, you can run out of fairway if you go more than about 220 yards. But you’ve got to carry it about 160 even from the forward tees to carry the junk and that can lead to some unpleasant surprised as I learned from one of my playing partners.

Even if you hit the fairway and have a perfect yardage, you have a variety of problems. The fairway is full of collection areas and drains and there’s a good chance that your ball is in a divot and if it’s wet, that your lie is really soggy. And the green is one of the silliest that I’ve ever seen. It has a false front that takes your ball 30 yards back off the front of the green. But it has another tier in the middle that’s so steep that if you hit it, your ball will roll back off the front of the green, 30 yards down the fairway. You need to be very precise with your distance and spin control here, or the shot to the green is basically unplayable.

The short downhill par 3 seventeenth is about 3 or 4 pretty good holes, but one bad one because Strantz decided that it would be all of them at the same time. Actually to this pin on the left side of the green, it’s a perfectly good downhill par 3 to a small green. But the green runs another 85 yards to the right, with distinct left, middle, and right sections. The teeing grounds are about 100 yards wide. And the eighteenth tee is actually right behind the sixteenth green, so the routing is a mess, especially if the flag is on the left side.

​I’d have been interested to play the left tee/right pin combination, which would have been an interesting semi-blind shot over a mound. But as we can see in the second picture, this area is probably too small and slopes away from the angle of play into junk. So I’m not sure that that iteration of the hole would work, although it would make the routing more coherent.

I don’t think that the long par 4 eighteenth is a bad hole in it’s own right, but it’s too hard for most golfers. And given all that we’ve just been through, that makes it a bad hole because it just piles on. It’s an almost impossible drive for weaker players because even though the carry to the fairway from the forward tees is about 130 yards, it’s at least 20 feet uphill over another sandy bomb crater. Again, the hole greatly favors long hitters because the further you go, the wider it is. The green is deep but narrow, with severe fall offs on both sides. It’s a very difficult shot for a low handicapper. If you’re a higher handicapper, you’ll break your record for the amount of times that you pick up in a round…if you haven’t already.

Tobacco Road is a very tough course to rate because it has more variance in the quality of the holes than any course that I’ve played. Some of the holes (1,4,11) are among the best that I’ve played. Most of the rest are good to very good, even if sometimes a bit questionable (i.e. 13). But six holes (6,9,15-18) are questionable-in-a-bad-way to simply horrible. And the routing of the latter is a mess too. I think that there’s a trade-off between good/bad routings and good/bad holes where at least if you’re going to sacrifice routing coherence, you should at least use that to build better holes. Here, the worst parts of the routing (5-7, 15-17) also produce the worst holes (6,15-17). I can’t believe that even if the property were awkward, such a lose-lose situation couldn’t have been avoided.

There were probably a lot of ways to solve these problems. One would be to put a par 3 in the 180 yard walk between 12 and 13 and get rid of the par 3 seventeenth. Then 15 and 16 could be a simple out and back starting from the 16th green. That would solve two routing problems and three bad hole problems.

And then you’d have what this course should be: not only one of the most original public golf courses in the country, but one of the best. The course does pretty well in the rankings as it is but it’s very controversial and I think that much of this was just unnecessary. I suspect that it would do a lot better if it had been toned down. A few quirks like the thirteenth green can be great, but there has to be balance. And that’s just lacking at Tobacco Road. And again, opposite to the spirit of Pinehurst no. 2, a lot of these quirks are manageable for good players but just kill high handicappers, especially those who struggle to carry the ball more than 150 yards off the tee…which is a lot of people.

Now you might say ‘well, isn’t the fact that it’s unique in the world of golf justification enough? Just like there’s nothing like Pinehurst no. 2, doesn’t it count in favor of Tobacco Road that there’s nothing like Tobacco Road?’ But that supposes that you couldn’t keep the essential Tobacco Roadyness if you changed a few holes. I think that you could. The four par 5s wouldn’t change and those are the holes that most people remember for the better. I’m not saying that they should get rid of some of the bold green contours or the wild waste bunkers. But fewer wide, skinny greens and a more cohesive routing wouldn’t cost this course much of what people see as special. It’d be a little more like Caledonia, which I find to be a superior Strantz course, but it’d keep the wildness that rightly makes Tobacco Road a noteworthy course.

Pine Needles appears to have gone through a few iterations over the past few decades but I think that with the latest version, a 2018 restoration by Kyle Franz (who also did Mid Pines across the street), they can stop and be completely satisfied with what they have. This is an excellent golf course; unlike the other Ross courses in the area, it wanders over a very large piece of property and has great variety of terrain. There’s also a bit more variety in the design than at Mid Pines or no. 2. Some of the fairways are wide, some narrow. Some of the greens are quite large, some smaller. Most holes are hilly, but some are flat. I think that the greens have more interesting surface contours than no. 2 or Mid Pines and some of the complexes have edges reminiscent of no. 2. The variety gives this course the edge for me over Mid Pines as the second-best of the courses that I’ve played in the area (no. 2, no. 4, no. 8, Mid Pines, Tobacco Road).
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The par 5 first in one of my favorite par 5s in the area and is a strong competitor with the opener at no. 2 for best opening hole. There are staggered left and right fairway bunkers and the aggressive drive will challenge the right one. You’ll be able to go for the green off a good drive but again, staggered bunkers on the approach demand accuracy. The green is excellent—very reminiscent of something you’d find on no. 2.

The long par 4 second is another beauty. You’ll want to skirt the bunkers on the right because you can run out of room if you go down the left. Also, the green and its approach slope left to right, so it’ll be easier to control your approach from the right side. The green is larger than what you’ll find at no. 2 and Mid Pines.

The short par 3 third over a small pond has always been the course’s signature hole. It’s a very nice par 3, but even with the restoration, I wouldn’t identify it as a standout beauty-wise.

The par 4 fourth reminds me a little bit of the fourth across the street at Mid Pines, but with the tee moved about 80 yards to the left. That means that instead of playing into the slope as you do there, you’re playing along it. The hole curves left and the fairway slopes right, making this a tough driving hole. There’s room out to the right, but for not a long par 4, your (uphill) approach can be quite long if you hit a weak one to the right. The angle and size of the green aren’t as exacting as its counterpart across the street.

Five is a medium-long par 3 to a very steep, back-to-front pitched green. The pin was in the front and from six feet past the hole, I putted off the front of the green. While that’s silly, I wouldn’t blame Donald Ross for it—they either shouldn’t put the pin there or they should keep the greens a bit slower.

Six is a nice up-and-over long par 4, where you drive over the crest of a hill. Drive placement isn’t so important, but it is important to hit a long drive to leave a shorter approach to this large and challenging green.

The medium length par 4 seventh is an easier driving hole than it appears. If you can get it past the bunker on the right, the fairway is wide open. But it’s best to go over the edge of the left fairway bunker because the hole bends left. Again, the green is large and has a lot of interior contour—I think that this might green might have the most interior contour of any of the Ross courses that I’ve played in the area.

Eight exemplifies the variety at Pine Needles. After several holes of playing up and over broad slopes, here we drive into a fairly narrow valley. This time, accuracy is more important than distance. The green is smaller and the setting more intimate than what we’ve encountered so far.

The variety continues at the ninth, which isn’t a particularly interesting driving hole, but has one of the most interesting greens on the course. It’s large, heavily contoured, and has a large trench starting in the front right, running along the right side and to the back.

The par 5 tenth is one of two sharp doglegs to the left (seventeen is the other). It’s a simple drive if you don’t mind playing it as a three shot hole. But if you want to try for the green in two, you’ll have to skirt or carry the left fairway bunkers. The lay up is a challenge because the fairway slopes left and there are staggered bunkers, first right then left.

The par 4 eleventh is downhill to the widest fairway on the course. The fairway does come in a bit on the right at about 250 yards, so long hitters should aim left. But it’s all about the green, which is small and elevated. Anything short or right will run off.

Twelve features another of my favorite features, the up-and-over blind drive. The bunker off the tee shouldn’t come into play and the fairway is pretty wide over the hill. The approach traverses and the green hangs on a right-to-left slope, a bit like the fifth green on no. 2. Left pins are very dangerous because if you go at one, there’s a good chance that the slope of the ground will carry your ball left down a slope or into a bunker.

Whatever its playing virtues, the downhill par 3 thirteenth is a beautiful piece of landscape architecture. The green slopes right-to-left and there are some interesting ridges in the left side of the green that’ll mess with your pitch if you pull it left. If there must be a signature hole, I’d vote for this one.

Fourteen is a very tough par 4 that doglegs right around the twelfth and thirteenth holes (fortunately there’s good tree protection). Although the fairway bunkers are on the right side, you want to drive to the outside of the dogleg on the left—the front left of the green is open and there’s a green side bunker front right.

Fifteen is a par 5 with bunkers staggered seemingly down its entire length. There’s plenty of room off the tee but the hole narrows on the approach, with a bunker cutting in on the right about 100 yards short of the green. The green is open in front and fairly flat, but there’s a tricky little dip behind it if you go long.

Sixteen is another very nice par 3. This section of the course is flat, but Franz has roughed up the area between the tee and green, so it’s very pretty. The green has a no. 2 edge in the back that will carry your ball at least 25 feet away from the green if you go long.

Seventeen is the other sharp dogleg left and is the most awkward hole on the course. It’s only about a 235 yard carry over the bunker on the corner, but it’s easy to catch the trees if you pull it just slightly on this line. This would be a good hole to hit a big hook, if you’re capable of that. If you’re in the right side of the fairway, it’s going to be very difficult to reach the green. The green is big and flat, but with interesting no. 2 edges right and long.

Apparently the final hole at Pine Needles was originally the first, which makes sense because it’s a medium-length par 4 of the type that Ross liked to start with. It looks like the left fairway bunker is new (you can see the Franz version on Google Maps and the previous version on Google Earth) and if you skirt or carry it, you can get pretty close to the green. The downhill approach to the green is very attractive and not too strenuous.

As with neighboring Mid Pines, I think that my expectations coming in were a little bit lower than they should have been, but that only made me enjoy it more. Pine Needles is a very good golf course. As with both no. 2 and Mid Pines, it’s an excellent challenge for the good player, but still very playable for the higher handicap. And I think that there’s quite a bit more variety here than on either no. 2 or Mid Pines.

In fact, a good way to describe Pine Needles is as a cross between no. 2 and Mid Pines. Many greens are reminiscent of those on no. 2, but the green surfaces are more varied in terms of size and undulating. I can imagine a lot of people preferring these greens to no. 2, although I definitely wouldn’t count myself among them. The rolling terrain creates some of the variety off the tee that you find at Mid Pines. But there’s greater variety of width off the tee here than at Mid Pines and a few semi-blind drives, which that course doesn’t really have. But regardless of how you assess its relative merits, Pine Needles is a must-play and is worth the trip to the North Carolina sandhills in its own right.

When I last came to the Pinehurst area in 2002, no one seemed to consider Mid Pines to be a course worth visiting. That’s changed with the recent restoration (redesign?) by Kyle Franz which, following Coore and Crenshaw’s lead at Pinehurst no. 2, removed the bermuda rough and replaced it with sandy hardpan, pine needles, and tufts of grass/pine saplings. While I can’t compare the current look of Mid Pines to its former, the current version has a classic, pleasing look.

And it plays even better than it looks. While I had heard very good things about the restoration and saw that the course was climbing some of the lists, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it is. The property is rolling-to-hilly and the routing makes excellent use of the terrain to create a variety of driving challenges and opportunities. Sometimes you need to curve the ball into slopes, sometimes you need to curve it with them, and sometimes you just need to carry them. The bunkering is not excessive, but you’ll often find one near where you’ll want to land your drive.
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This combination of variety in the terrain and routing plus the excellent bunkering make Mid Pines probably the most interesting driving course that I’ve played in the Pinehurst area—although Pine Needles across the street shares a lot of these same virtues (that Donald Ross knew what he was doing). The green complexes aren’t as interesting as no. 2 and I don’t think that the green surface contours are as interesting as Pine Needles, but shapes of the greens and the green side bunkering reinforce the premium on good driving—it’s important to be approaching many of these greens from a certain part of the fairway. That’s part of what makes Mid Pines such a good driving course and, of course, it also makes it an excellent approach shot course.


Number one is the standard Donald Ross opening hole—a medium length par 4 that isn’t too difficult if you don’t get too aggressive. While the fairway isn’t narrow, it narrows at about 225 from the regular tees and there really isn’t much reason to go past that. Don’t start your day playing from the waste area on the left—like I did…twice.

The second is a lovely medium-long par 3 over a pond. There’s a bit more room up there than it looks, but it’s important to keep the ball short of the hole; the green is pretty steep from back to front.

The long par 4 third is probably the weakest hole on the course because the fairway goes through a low-lying, swampy area. The approach to the green is open, but flanking front left and right bunkers demand accuracy.

Mid Pines really gets going at the fourth, which is one of the best short par 4s that I’ve seen. If you’re paying attention, you can figure out what you need to do from the tee: the green has a bunker at its front right and appears to angle from front-left to back-right along it. Its left side is open, so you should try to drive up the left side. This turns out to be more important than you might realize because the green is also very narrow and there’s a bunker in the back left. Moreover, there’s a tree in the right side of the fairway and it’ll mess with your approach if you drive it too far. In short, if you hit a good drive up the left, you can be aggressive. If you drive it up the right, you should play to the front left of the green.

The par 5 fifth shouldn’t be too difficult…unless you hit a bad drive. If you do, carrying the pond on the second might be a challenge and the fairway to its right is not that wide. But if you hit a good drive (which you should aim over the edge of the right fairway bunker), you should have a good shot at the green in two.

The sixth is another fairly short par 5. As at the fifth, aim you drive over the left edge of the right fairway bunker, which shouldn’t come into play. The fairway is quite wide, so bomb away. You’ll need to have to go for the green in two because it’s fronted by a deep bunker and you’ll have to carry it on. There, however, is an opening in the front right and if you lay up, it’s important to do it out to the right so that you can play into this open aspect of the green.

The medium-length par 4 seventh is one of my favorite holes at Mid Pines. Like at the fourth, looking at the green and its surroundings tells you what’s better and worse off the tee. Again, it’s open at the front left. But go too far either left or right off the tee and trees come into play. So left-center is good—and there’s a bunker right there, a few yards away.

This was also one of my favorite greens at Mid Pines. It has probably the most interesting interior contours and the slopes at the right and back are reminiscent of no. 2.

After an attractive downhill par 3 where going long leaves you in the only spot in the Pinehurst area that might be worse than over the back of the eighth green on no. 2, we come to a short, dogleg right par 4. Some people might find it awkward, but I like it. Some will be tempted to cut the dogleg, but that’s a fairly stupid thing to try to do. What you want to do is get your drive as far out to the corner of the dogleg as you can, just short of the fairway bunker through it. This will give you the best angle to a small, well-defended green.

The par 5 tenth requires a 240-260 yard drive to reach the top of the hill and you’ll need to be reasonably accurate because there are fairway bunkers on both side. The landing area for the lay up is generous and right of center is probably best, but placement isn’t that important. The main feature on the green is a false front.

I like the downhill short par 3 eleventh, which is very attractive and has some of the course’s best green contours.

The medium length, dogleg left par 4 twelfth is one of the course’s best holes. The fairway slopes right-to-left and there’s a bunker in the corner of the dogleg. While you can’t really see the green, what you can see from the tee suggests that you should try to drive up the left side. This is more important than you might realize—I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a green where the angle on your approach is as important as this one. It angles from front-left to back-right and is very narrow.

Of all of the pictures that I’ve taken, I failed to get one of this approach shot, but you can see the narrowness of the green and the lip of the front-right bunker guarding an approach from the right side of the fairway in this shot from behind the green.

The thirteenth is an excellent example of a type of hole that I love—a long par 3 where you can run the ball onto the green. That’s important here because this one is about 225 yards. Keep your shot up the right and it’ll feed left into the middle of the green.

The medium-short par 4 fourteenth is a great example of using the slope of the ground and some simple design elements to make a hole interesting. The entire fairway slopes left to right and the green is deep, but narrow, with bunkers on both sides. An approach from the left side of the fairway plays into its deepest aspect. If you hit a weak drive out to the right, you have to play over the right green side bunkers into a narrower aspect of the green and you might have tree trouble. It’s a great example of how even though there aren’t a lot of driving hazards, good driving is still very important on this course.

While you wanted to work your drive into the slope on fourteen, you want to work with it on the par 5 fifteenth. This hole plays in the opposite direction next to number fourteen, so now the fairway slopes right-to-left. The key element here is the bunker on the hill, just right of the fairway. If you carry this, your ball will kick forward and you’ll have a good shot at the green in two. Past this, the fairway slopes as much forward as right-to-left. But in line with or short of the bunker, the pitch is just right-to-left, so your drive just kicks left rather than forward and left.

The long, dogleg left par 4 sixteenth is probably the toughest hole on the course. It’s tough to carry the bunker on the left unless you’re a very long hitter. But otherwise, you’ll want to skirt its edge or hit a draw because it’s important to leave your drive in the left side of the fairway. The green is fairly small, elevated, and well-defended by bunkers—you don’t want to be hitting into it with a long iron. And if you don’t hit a long drive up the left, that’s what you’ll have.

The seventeenth is, along with seven and twelve, part of set of excellent medium-length par 4s. This one bends left-to-right, with the primary driving hazard on the right. You should be able to carry this and it’s important to keep your drive up the right side because you can run out of room on the left. A fade is very helpful here. The green opens from the right side but more important, slopes pretty good from left to right. So a drive up the right side will play into the primary slope. Unless you can control your spin, it’s easy for a shot from the left side of the fairway to slide away and miss the green right.

The long par 4 finisher is simply excellent. You drive downhill and the fairway turns left. Unless you hug the left tree line or hit a draw, your uphill approach will be quite long. But it’s also better for your ball to end up center or right-center because the green is protected by a bunker front left. The green site, with the 100 year old hotel in the background, must be one of the game’s most elegant.

The feeling that I had while finishing up my first round at Mid Pines was “perhaps more than any other course that I’ve played, this is where’d I’d like to be a member and play all my golf.” It’s the perfect member’s course; it’s walkable, there are several shorter loops of holes that you could play (like 1-6-17-18 or 1-6-7-12-17-18), and it’s an excellent test for a good golfer while still being playable for everyone. This last point is particularly important; this course might strike the best balance of being challenging for good golfers and playable for higher handicap golfers than any other that I’ve seen. It’s not as difficult as no. 2, but it would still be a good challenge to all short of the pros. Overall, it’s close between Mid Pines and Pine Needles, but I preferred Mid Pines to Pinehurst no. 4. I’d imagine that there’s a strong argument for Mid Pines being the second-best course in the area, although I haven’t played Dormie Club or the Forest Creek courses.

N.B.: if it’s likely to be cold and wet when you go, stay in the rustic Mid Pines hotel. While most would agree that it could use a bit of a freshening (but I liked the uneven, creaky steps—gives the place character), the rooms are equipped with some of the best radiators that I’ve ever seen. I was able to dry several loads of soaked clothes, including a winter jacket, in a few hours.

Before my November 2019 visit, I had played Pinehurst no. 2 one time: in late June 2002. Both times it was 40 degrees…the first time celsius, the second time fahrenheit. Plus this time, there was a light drizzle from about the ninth tee to the twelfth green. Even with two layers of gloves, I could barely grip my 9-iron when I was standing on the ninth tee.

Despite the differences in playing conditions plus the removal of the rough and restoration of the pine needley-wire grassey-scrub along the fairways, Pinehurst no. 2 was fundamentally the same course that I remembered. The main feature, the fairly small, convex greens, hasn’t changed at all. What stuck in my mind last time about the greens was that for the most part, they weren’t that severe. Most of the green edges are only 3 or 4 feet high and the slopes will only carry your ball 10-15 ft. away from the green. Several areas off the edge of greens don’t have any slopes (but it’s still all short grass). I didn’t think that the greens were severe at all—they were more tricky than severe.

This time around, I noticed a bit more severity in the green complexes than I had last time. The one that had stood out to me before was long and left on the eighth green—the shot from there is impossible. It’s where John Daly had his famous meltdown where he hit a shot that was coming back to his feet and whacked it across the other side of the green while it was still in motion. While I still think that that’s the worst spot on the golf course, there are several others (left on five, anywhere but short on six, long on 14) that also leave nearly impossible recoveries.

Another thing that I had remembered from last time that I absolutely confirmed this time is that even though many of the green surroundings aren’t that severe, some of the shots to them are very intimidating. Many of the greens have false fronts and because you can’t see the rest of the surface of the green from the fairway, it looks like the green surface is minuscule, even if it isn’t. This is an issue on 1, 2, and especially 15.

But what became clearer to me this time is how well all of the pieces of this course fit together. It’s actually a very playable course for higher handicap golfers. There isn’t much directly in the way between the tee and the green on most holes and if you can avoid the bunker chokepoints, the fairways are fairly wide as well. Most greens give you an opportunity to roll the ball on from somewhere in front, although not necessarily the front middle. And the greens, while small, are modestly contoured. If you can convince yourself that the most difficult looking approaches are easier than they are and play conservatively, you should be able to get around this course.

So Pinehurst no. 2 is, by far more than any other course I’ve played, one where you need to know where you can’t miss and where it’s ok to miss. If you split the approach to each green in half left to right, at least one of the two halves will leave a playable next shot. But as I mentioned above, several greens have places where you absolutely cannot miss. Of course your first time around the course, you’re not going to know where these places are. The most unfortunate thing about Pinehurst no. 2 is that requires a few playings and a lot of attention to details to understand the hierarchy of misses around the green. That’s what makes it such an outstanding major tournament venue. But the general public isn’t going to have that option. But a good general rule is ‘err short rather than long and aim for the open areas in front of the greens.’ You’ll do just fine here most of the time if you leave your approaches a little short of the green.


The medium length par 4 first is one of the best opening holes that I’ve played. It’s wide-open until about 250, where there’s a fairway bunker on the left. There’s no need to go past this point as you’ll still have about 150 in. But this is one of the most visually intimidating approaches on the course—there’s a false front and the left side of the green is probably 5 or 6 feet above the base of the false front. The surroundings are closer to the level of the green on the right, but the green angles slightly from front right to back left along the bunker. If you aim at the right side, you’ll probably miss right.

But the pitch from the bottom of the steepest part of the false front isn’t bad—5 or 6 feet uphill to a deep aspect of the green. And the run-off if you miss short-right or right is very mild; the green is elevated only 1-2 ft. above the surroundings on this side (same for the bad). Thinking back to the tee, it’s best to come in from the right-center of the fairway but as will be the case on many holes to come, most misses around this green aren’t that bad. Just don’t go left.

The long par 4 second is one of the toughest holes on the course. Again, bunkers encroach into the fairway on the left side at the length of a good drive. It’s best to be in the left side of the fairway but unless you’ve bombed your drive, you should play conservatively here—pitches from the front-left are fairly easy and every other miss leaves a very hard shot. I pushed my approach, ended up in the bunker short, and was very happy to make 5.

Three is a short par 4 that they like to convert into a drivable par 4 for big tournaments. The rest of us should lay up short of the bunker that comes into the fairway on the right. It’s always a little bit better to be on the right side of the fairway because if you miss short, the right side of the green is open. Both times that I played it, I missed the fairway right. If you avoid one of the clumps of grass (a big if), the packed sand is a good playing surface, but it still gives like a bunker if you hit the ball fat. You need to hit the ball cleanly from here.

Numbers four and five used to be a par 5 and par 4 respectively, now it’s reversed. I was worried about this change, but I think that it’s actually made both holes better. Four is an awkward driving hole—a slight dogleg left with a left-to-right sloping fairway. It’s important to shape your drive a bit from right to left. There’s an opening to the green between front-left and front-right bunkers. There’s a bit of a false front, but otherwise this is one of the simpler green complexes. Unless you short side yourself, any miss is ok.

Number 5 has always been one of the holes on Pinehurst no. 2 most likely to appear on great holes lists. So it was surprising to me that they would turn it into a par 5. But I think that this has substantially improved the hole. Whereas before it was easy to carry the bunkers up the left and have your ball run well down the fairway, now the bunkers encroach right where a good drive will land. Long hitters will still be able to carry them (although maybe not from the tips), but everyone else has to either play short or skirt/shape it around the trees on the right.

I think that the approach to the green also works better now. The bunkers short and right have always come into play if you didn’t hit a good drive, but now you have to carry them if you want to go for the green in two or play near them. The green is deep but narrow and its deepest aspect is in line with the edge of the encroaching bunkers. A lay-up to the right leaves an awkward angle and you’ll be aiming right at one of the pits of doom: the swale left of the green. This is another intimidating green to hit to, but short and right won’t get you into trouble (your lack of skills still might).

The long par 3 sixth is probably the only hole that I liked less than I had remembered. I think that the green here is just too severe—which you saw on display if you watched any of the US Amateur. Like the first, the false front is probably 5 or 6 ft. high and short is not a bad miss. But the green is severely pitched from back right to front left and any miss right or long creates a risk of knocking it off the other side of the green. I think that this hole would be better if all but the front of the green were about a foot lower but again, if you play conservatively, you should be ok.

While the bones of the medium-length par 4 seventh are the same as before, this is probably one of the most-improved holes with the Coore-Crenshaw restoration. The inside corner used to have a mess of bunkers, kind of like the old Fazio version of no. 4. The outside of the dogleg had some very ugly mounds with bunkers cut into them. That’s all gone. The waste bunker on the corner of the dogleg looks terrific and while the green is one of the least severe on the course, it’s important that you drive near the corner of the dogleg to shorten the approach.

The short par 5 eighth was and is one of my favorite holes on no. 2. A big part of this is the topography; the fairway slopes gradually forward for about the first 250 yards but then slopes left-to-right. The longer you drive it, the more you have to shape the ball. The approach is uphill and wide open. Whatever you do, don’t go long on the approach. Long and especially long left are the worst spots on the course. If you hit it over there, you’ll already be halfway down the ninth hole. You may want to consider just continuing on and playing the ninth from there.

The par 3 ninth is very tough, especially if you can’t feel your hands. The green is pretty shallow and there isn’t a lot of room to miss short or long. A safe shot is to the middle of the green but if the pin is on the left, this leaves a tough putt up a tier.

Ten is one of the toughest par 5s that I’ve ever played. The waste area encroaches on the right in the driving zone from the back sets of tees but even if you’ve hit a good drive, it’s one of the toughest lay-ups that I’ve ever seen. There are three staggered bunkers in the lay-up area. The one closest to the green is about 120 from the middle and unless you’ve killed your drive, you should play short of it.

But the green is shallow and wide and if the pin is on the left side (as it was on this day), it’s best to lay-up to the right side of the fairway. This means that you’ll have to skirt or carry the second lay-up bunker. I hit a good lay-up but still had an 8-iron to the green. I played to the middle and two-putted from 40 ft. If the flag is on the left and you have anything more than a wedge, I’d suggest that you do the same. Over the green is no good.

The par 4s eleven and twelve are not stand-out holes…which just goes to show how good this course is. The drive on eleven is semi-blind and again, the junk on the left cuts in right where your good drive would go (funny how that keeps being true). In any case, if the flag is anywhere other than the front-right, the right side of the fairway is better as you play into the deepest aspect of the green from here. If the flag is front-right, a little more to the left is optimal as the front-right bunker obscures the front-right of the green from the right side of the fairway.

Pretty much anywhere in the fairway on twelve is fine but the further you go, the more the bunkers encroach on the right. As long as you carry the bunker about 10 yards short of the green, a miss short is fine. This is also the rare occasion where a miss long is fine. The green is large and fairly flat, with only weakly convex edges.

The short par 4 thirteenth is not a difficult driving hole, but it’s important to drive it to a yardage that you like because the approach is uphill and has probably the steepest false front on the course. This hole feels more conventional to me than a lot of the others on no. 2 because of the natural green site on the ridge. Most of the greens here are built up on relatively flat land and what makes them brilliant and unusual is how they were built up on flat land. But this green site does bring some variety to the course, which is no bad thing.

The long par 4 fourteenth is another of my favorite holes. The concept on the drive is the same (the further you go, the narrower it becomes), but the approach to the green and the green itself are beauties. A bunker crosses into the middle of the fairway from the right about 15 yards short of the green and there’s a swale between this and the green that continues up the right side. But the approach from the front-left is completely open and flat. A miss in the front-left quadrant leaves a simple pitch.

But here’s an interesting thing to notice: the green appears to rise in the back while the surroundings appear to slope away in this directions. That suggests that the deeper you play into the green, the more severe an offline miss is. And this is absolutely correct. Anything wide further than halfway into the green is trouble. And over this green is in the running with over the eighth for worst spot on the course.

The par 3 fifteenth is one of the most intimidating holes that I’ve ever played. It looks like you’re playing to the top of a globe, where pretty much anything but a perfect shot will roll off. The intimidation factor caused me to chunk my tee shot in 2002 and miss short left. This time, it was so cold that I couldn’t even reach the green for 180 yards with a well struck 4-iron (normally goes about 205). But despite the intimidation, a pitch (or putt) from just short of the green isn’t that hard. Still, this was the hardest hole in the stroke play portion of the 2019 US Amateur, averaging 3.66! So I’m beating the average in my two rounds (4 in 2002, 3 in 2019).

The short par 5 sixteenth is a very good driving hole, with a diagonal bunker up the left side. The more of this bunker that you carry, the better chance you have of having your ball bound down the fairway. If I were to make one criticism of no. 2, it’s that there aren’t enough drives with hazard set at an angle to the tee where a good drive on an aggressive line makes the hole easier. Most of the driving hazards here come in the form of fairway pinched by waste area/bunkers in the driving zone. The approach is slightly downhill to a green which has a false front, but is fairly open in front. If you’re laying up, be aware that there’s a hidden bunker on the left about 100 yards short of the green.

Seventeen is a fairly straight-forward downhill par 3. The green is narrow in the front, but fairly deep. Long here is less trouble than on most other holes.

Which brings us to the final hole, one of the best finishing holes that I’ve played. As I mentioned in my review of no. 4, there’s pretty stiff competition in this area for best finishing hole between no. 4, no. 2, and Mid Pines. They’re all tough, but no. 2’s is probably the toughest. While there’s more room off this tee than on most holes, you’ll want to keep your drive near the bunker on the left. That’s because the green is deep but narrow and from the right side of the fairway, you play to the deepest aspect of the green. It’s a very awkward shot from the left side of the fairway because in addition to shooting across the green, you have a bunker in your way on the left side and you’re playing directly at another through the green on the right.

Wherever you drive it, you have 10-15 yards between the front bunker and the front of the green and while you’ll be in a swale, it isn’t that hard a shot. As with the rest of the course, if you manage your misses, you’ll have a chance. I came up a little bit short, pitched to about 8 ft. from the back-left hole location, and made the putt for a 79—which made me pretty damn happy because I could barely hit the ball in the middle of the round.

I think that Pinehurst no. 2 is deserving of all of the accolades that it gets. The concept of the greens is so simple, yet I’ve never seen another course that comes even close to pulling it off—even though architects are putting chipping areas around their greens all the time now. The genius is in the subtlety and the balance; many of the green edges are only 3 or 4 ft. high and the slopes only take your ball 10-15 feet away from the green. This shot is tricky (because you’re probably not used to playing it), but it’s not ‘hard.’ A few places are more severe but there isn’t a single green on this course that doesn’t give you ample room to have a fairly simple next shot. This means that the course is very playable for a weaker player who’s trying to run the ball into the green, but very difficult for the better player who’s used to attacking pins and making birdies. Unless the course is very soft (not common considering it’s on pure sand), the aggressive approach is likely to result in a lot of bogies and doubles—to which the 77.09 scoring average (!) in the two stroke play rounds of the 2019 US Amateur attests.

If I had one criticism of the course, it’s that there isn’t enough variety off the tee. It’s a very tough driving course, but the difficulty is mainly for longer hitters in squeezing their drives past choke points. There are very few holes with diagonal driving hazards. Others have pointed to the lack of undulation on the green surfaces as a weakness but I don’t agree—given the size of the greens and the intricacies of their surroundings, undulating greens would be overkill. You could make the argument that there could be more variety in the size of the greens and that if there were a few larger ones, those could have more undulation. That’s a fair point.

But the concept of this course is so original and well-executed that I think it’s fine just the way it is. Changing some of the greens, even if it would add a bit more variety, would change the concept of the course. It’s all about managing your approach shots—knowing where not to hit it around the greens and which pins allow you to be more aggressive. Approaches could still be exacting if some of the greens larger and more undulating, but it would change how this course is exacting.

See that’s one of the nice things about golf courses—there are a lot of them. And because there are a lot of them, they can be interesting in different ways. But in the thousands of golf courses in the world, I doubt that there is another course that has the same consistent concept as no. 2 and even if there is, it probably isn’t nearly as good. So even if some of these changes would ‘improve’ the course, they wouldn’t actually improve it because the course would start to lose what makes it unique.
In addition to being probably the most original course that I’ve played, Pinehurst no. 2 is clearly the best. Admittedly, I haven’t played many great courses in the US, but I’ve played all of the London area heathland courses and the England/Wales links courses like Royal St. George’s and Rye. While the best of those courses all have several great holes, Pinehurst no. 2 has no weak ones. There isn’t a single hole here that is less than very good and several which are great (at least 1, 2, 5, 8, 14, 18, maybe a few more). The weakness of the London area heathland courses is the greens and obviously, that’s not the case with no. 2.   Throw in the fact that it’s a great course for both tournaments and every day play and I can hardly imagine a more effective golf course. It’s just a shame that the prohibitive cost makes it unlikely that most golfers will be able to familiarize themselves with it.

Pinehurst no. 4 appears to be the resort’s architectural weathervane: whichever architect is popular at the moment, they’re going to get an opportunity to reshape no. 4 in their image. So the Donald Ross course has been the subject of a lot of cosmetic surgery over the years, first by Robert Trent Jones, then by Rees. In 1999, the resort brought Tom Fazio in to redo the whole thing and he produced something very odd both for himself and generally—a course with a few hundred small, round bunkers scattered everywhere. I guess that this was still the end of the era of ‘Scottish-style’ courses that were anything but, and this was his take on that style. I’d imagine that this was the resort’s idea rather than his because it looked unlike anything I’ve seen from Fazio.

I played the Fazio version of no. 4 back in the summer of 2002 when it was relatively new. I hadn’t seen many great courses at the time (mainly just no. 2 the day before) and I thought that while is was a bit odd, it was pretty good. I liked it more than no. 8, which I played the next day and which is a very typical 90s Fazio course. Part of this was just that the land was interesting and I thought that the holes flowed nicely over it. Bunkers aside, it was a pretty good golf course.

Since it had been less than 20 years since the Fazio redo, I was surprised to hear a few years ago that the resort had hired Gil Hanse to completely redo no. 4. Surprised, but very excited. The trend in golf course architecture has changed for the better since then and I was sure that Hanse would be able to do better with the Pinehurst no. 4 property. Simply put, he has. While most of the holes follow the same routing as the Fazio version, the bunker style is almost the complete opposite, large and ragged as opposite to small and round and with many open sand and grass waste areas. I think that almost everyone could agree, it’s a much more natural and better-looking course now.

The greens have also changed quite a bit. From what I can remember, the greens on the Fazio version were pretty typical for Fazio, with a lot of broad slopes. But these are more intricate, with a lot of small bumps and ridges. While the biggest improvement is the bunkering, the greens are also a huge improvement. And Hanse changed some of the holes as well. He built a new par 3 fourth, added a par 3 eleventh to remove the awkward dogleg on the old eleventh, removed the old par 3 twelfth, and shortened the par 4 sixteenth to make it drivable and, again, to remove an awkward dogleg.

All of these are substantial improvements. I think that no. 4 still falls short of no. 2, which has the best green complexes that I’ve seen. But Hanse does a better job of mimicking some of their shaping than any other new course with which I'm familiar. I think that the course compares very favorably to Mid Pines and Pine Needles. It feels a bit more modern than both of those courses and it’s probably a bit less demanding off the tee. But I don’t see these as weaknesses—I like the rugged look here and while it is a bit more wide open, it’s very balanced off the tee. Some holes demand length but give you the width to swing away while others require more precision. The strategy off the tee is dictated a bit more by contours around the greens than bunkers. That’s not to say that I think that no. 4 is a better course than those, but it’s certainly in the same league.


The nuts and bolts of the par 4 first are similar to the Fazio version: drive out into an open area, but one that’s been fashioned into a dogleg right by a mess of sand on the inside of the dogleg. It’s and awkward drive because the fairway is much narrower than the area that you’re hitting into. The hole isn’t long, so I’d suggest playing conservatively off the tee. The green is open in front and it’s easy to run the ball on.

We walk around the twelfth tee and eleventh green on no. 2 to get to the short, downhill par 5 second. Though the landing area is partially obscured, the fairway is wide open and you should bomb away. The lay up should be straightforward (just carry the bunker) if you’ve hit a good drive. The green complex is very clever for those who can go for it in two because it’s completely blocked by a bunker, but you can use the hill on the right to feed the ball onto the green. This won’t matter for long hitters, but might have been useful for me if I had been playing on a day when it was warmer than 45 degrees.

I really like the look of the par 4 third. If you’ve read some of my other posts, you’ll know that I’m a fan of uphill shots and this one requires you to play right of or carry two fairway bunkers. The approach to the green is a beauty: the green sits at grade and is completely open for a run up. When you approach it, you see that it is large and full of little bumps and ridges. A fairly simple hole done very well.

Hanse completely redid the par 3 fourth; it used to be a pond hole with the green on the far side of the picture. Now the green on the much shorter current version hangs on the hill on the left. It’s an awkward hole, with the tree on the left coming into play for left hole locations or if you hit a fade. But I think it’s an improvement over the previous version.

I remembered the par 4 fifth as being one of the better holes on the Fazio course and that’s true of the Hanse version too. The drive is an attractive one into the side of a hill. The best drive here will skirt the bunkers and junk on the right. It’s a very long par 4 so it’s important to hit a good drive—otherwise you’ll have to lay up short of the front left bunker. The green has a pretty steep false front, but you can run the ball around this if you carry the bunker. It’s a very tough, but very good hole.

The par 3 sixth is very good, but deadly. Just take my word for it—don’t hit it over the green. Hanse did an excellent job of shaping this green complex; the left side of the green, with its small mounds and run-off 4 ft. downhill and 15 ft. away from the green is as good an attempt at a Pinehurst no. 2 style run-off as I’ve seen.

The par 4 seventh is a very good driving hole—all of the visible hazards are up the right and you should challenge them (1) because the green opens up from this side and (2) because the fairway runs out on the left. The green is another beauty, angled from front right to back left with two perpendicular ridges running through it.

The par 4 eighth has bunkers cutting through most of the fairway from the right. Laying up short of these will leave a blind shot but if you’re on the right side, the approach to the green will be open. The par 5 ninth will be a real challenge for most people who play this course because the fairway is cut off by about a 70 yard-long hell’s half acre hazard starting probably 220 from the green. Lay up to the right here because the green is open (but semi-blind) from this angle.

The medium-length par 4 tenth plays to a wide fairway, but with a bunker pinching in on the left where a long driver might want to hit it. The approach is over a bunker that’s actually well short of the green which again, is very elegant (the junk to its left, not so much).

The short par 3 eleventh is new and helps the flow of the routing in this area. You used to walk halfway down what is now this hole for the eleventh, which was just the current twelfth with an awkward dogleg. As of mid-October 2020, Google Maps shows the current version of the course while Google Earth shows the Fazio version. So we can compare them.
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The new green embodies a principle that I’ve always liked: err short and you have more room wide to miss. The deeper you go, the narrower the green becomes. And the bunkers are pretty deep, so a back-and-forth across the green is a possibility. Clearly the players in the 2019 US Amateur hadn’t learned these lessons because this short par 3 was the 3rd hardest hole on the course in the opening stroke play rounds.

The long par 4 twelfth features a semi-blind drive where you want to go down the left side to shorten the hole. The green is two-tiered from back to front and completely open in front. The back tier is shallow and I suspect that this is to encourage a run-up shot—you’ll need to put a lot of spin on the ball to land and stop it up there. But we had a front pin and as you can see, it wasn’t so hard to get at.

We go down the hill and to the left for the par 5 thirteenth tee. If you look left, you’ll see another green. I couldn’t figure out what that hole was—it didn’t look like there was another course nearby. Well, it’s actually the old par 3 twelfth on the Fazio course. Apparently my memory for golf holes isn’t as good as I thought… But the once and current thirteenth hasn’t changed much. You still drive out to a pond, which you can carry to go for the green, or play safe with a shorter carry to the right. The further right you bailout on the lay-up, the trickier the approach to any front pin because there’s a rise short and right of the green that will a less-than-precise pitch offline.

The long par 3 fourteenth over the pond is probably the least-changed hole on the course. But the short par 4 fifteenth is an improvement because while Fazio made us drive to the top of the hill to play the drive, Hanse gives us a very English-looking, uphill drive from near the pond. As is appropriate for a blind drive, the landing area is generous. But the green is one of the best, with a series of little ridges coming in from the right side.

Sixteen is another hole which Hanse changed substantially. It used to be a medium length par 4 with kind of an awkward dogleg left. Hanse has moved both the tee and green closer to each other and made it a drivable par 4. There’s a cluster of bunkers that crosses most of the driving area but it’s probably only about 150 to carry them. The hole is dictated by the shaping around the green and you can make out the major feature from the tee: a mound on the right side of the green. Thinking backwards, you should realize that if you’re approaching from the right side of the fairway, you’ll have to play over this mound. Therefore you should play up the left side. This is even more true than you might think because the green is on a narrow plateau angling from front left to back right. A pitch from the front-left is easy but if you hit it down the right side of the fairway, unless you’re a very good wedge player, it’s very easy to miss the green. It’s a textbook example of both a drivable par 4 and how to use contours rather than bunkers to generate strategy.

The seventeenth is one of the most demanding driving holes on the course, with a left-to-right sloping fairway and a bunker in the left-center right where you want to drive it. It’s a long par 5, so you’ll probably be laying up. And the lay-up is tricky, with staggered bunkers right then left. The green is among the more receptive on the course, but that’s appropriate because the two previous shots have been demanding.

Eighteen extends a Pinehurst area tradition: the great long par 4 finishing hole. I remembered liking the Fazio version and comparing Google Maps to Google Earth, they’re fairly similar. But the Hanse version has a bit more bite; it’s a bit more of an S-shaped hole than before, with the bunker on the left off the drive cutting in a bit more and the waste area on the approach angling in from the right rather than crossing the fairway. The approach reminds me a bit of the approach to eighteen on no. 2, but this green is a bit wider and there’s no bunker on the high left side. But it’s definitely a strong contender for best eighteenth hole in the sand hills, so it’s a good one.

Pinehurst no. 4 is a very well-balanced test of golf. Some holes really reward length. It almost never feels tight off the tee, but there’s always an advantage to being on one side of the fairway as opposed to the other. The green complexes are fantastic; they’re open and receptive from the proper spot in the fairway. Several have false fronts, but most have simple, flat entrances (from the right angle). The variety of contour is excellent. Some are fairly flat (1, 11, 17), some flat but pitched (8, 18), but most have a bunch of little ridges and bumps that require you to think about the pin placement and not stray too far from it (2, 3, 7, 10, 15).

The course exudes one thing above all: that Gil Hanse and company really cared about what they were doing here. They understood the historic nature of their task and put a lot of thought into designing and shaping these holes. But they were also cognizant about not overdoing it. The course is challenging, but it never really feels intimidating. None of the drives (except maybe on seventeen) feel narrow. Unlike some of the shots on no. 2, you’re never standing on the tee or in the fairway thinking ‘how the hell am I supposed to hit this green?’ It played about 3.5 shots easier than no. 2 in the two stroke play rounds of the 2019 US Amateur, but it still averaged 73.36 shots on a par of 70. I’m not sure where I’d rank no. 4 among the area’s many great courses, but I definitely look forward to returning so that I can think about it a bit more.

While most people go to Marquette Golf Club to play the spectacular Greywalls course, it isn’t the only course there. In fact, people have been playing golf here since 1926 when architects William Langford and Theodore Moreau laid out an 18 hole course. Only 9 of these holes were built and eventually, part of the land for the second 9 on the east side of the property was used to build houses. But by the 1960s, the club decided to go ahead with a second nine and commissioned David Gill to design it. The current Heritage Course is a mix of Langford and Gill holes, with most of the Langford holes coming in the middle of the front nine and most of the Gill holes at the end of the back nine.

But thanks to the club and our host, superintendent Craig Moore, our group was able to play the Langford 9 in its original order. While the rest of our golf course architecture snob outing stopped there, Bob and I continued on and played the Gill 9. This was my second trip around the Heritage Course (the first came in its everyday configuration in 2011) and cemented my fondness for the course. It’s clear that despite their somewhat degraded state, the Langford 9 holes are the stars here. But there are several good holes on the Gill 9 as well and I think that with a little tree clearing (and lack of restoration of the Langford 9), they wouldn’t be too far apart in quality.

It’s certainly worth playing all eighteen holes if you’re going to play the Heritage Course and it’s also worth playing the Heritage Course if you come to play Greywalls. While it doesn’t have the drama of Greywalls, it’s on a very good piece of property and makes for an excellent second 18 or evening nine.


The first hole on the Langford 9 is the tenth on the Heritage Course. It’s a slight dogleg left with a wall of trees protecting this hole from the driving range on the right (with moderate success). As you approach the green, you can see the old Langford bunkers on the left side that are now grass. And if you look around the green, you’ll see the margins of the old Langford green pad, which in many cases are ~50% larger than the greens in their current state.

Two (Heritage 11) doglegs right around some spruce trees that attempt, probably most of the time in vain, to protect the eleventh (2nd) hole from slicers. The second plays up the hill again again, you can see the old Langford bunkers adding zig and zag to the fairway. The green complex looks like it lays simply on the land but if you look over the back, you can see that it’s been built up a good 8 feet.

Three (7) is a great 140 yard drop shot to a severely back-to-front pitched green on the edge of a valley. Again, the front of the green is built up several feet from its surroundings. One thing that I noticed here, like at Langford and Moreau’s most famous course, the Links at Lawsonia, is that all of the greens involved substantial earth moving but if you’re playing into them from the correct place, it’s hard to tell that they did any earth moving at all. The shaping is always very well-blended into its surroundings.

The par 4 fourth (8) is something of a Langford and Moreau template. As at the second at Lawsonia, this drive is blind over a hill and the architects placed two bunkers on opposite sides of the fairway that form a V-shape facing the tee about 130 yards out that golfers need to carry. They repeated this feature several times at Lawsonia, including on the second shot of the par 5 ninth and the drive on the par 4 seventeenth. While most will be able to carry these bunkers, they would have probably caught many mis-hit shots in the 1920s.

The second shot plays downhill to a shrunken green in a great green complex. There are crossing trench bunkers about 30-50 yards short on the left and the green side bunkers are no match for their Langford ancestors. But the entire green pad is being mowed as short grass which suggests that the green might be restored to its original size in the near future.

The par 5 fifth (4) is a beauty. The drive is uphill and if you want to go for the green in two, you’ll have to skirt the wooden ravine on the right edge of the fairway. The approach is downhill to what appears to be an almost completely restored Langford surface (again, the bunkers not so much). Take a look over the back right of this green to see just how much above its surroundings it was built.

The par 3 sixth (5) and short par 4 seventh (6) have seen better days. On the former, the green has shrunk and bunkers were built on the actual green pad (!). The seventh was originally a 240 par 3 but has become about a 280 yard par 4. This green was absolutely enormous but is currently at best half its original size.

The long par 4 eighth (12) was a beast back into the wind, although there’s ample fairway here to bomb away. There was originally a crossing bunker cutting in from the left ~50-60 yards short of the green. While the bunkers could use some work, the green has been restored to the full original pad. You can tell that it had shrunk because there are sprinklers about 15 feet into the green in several places.

The short par 4 ninth (13) was originally a much longer par 4 where you teed off from across Grove St. There was a solitary fairway bunker up the left side near the start of the fairway. Now there are two bunkers and a maple tree on the right edge of the fairway, near where you want to hit your drive. While not at all what Langford intended, I think that the current hole is actually very good, with a drive placed near the bunkers giving you a better view and angle into the green. If they do ever restore the rest of the Langford nine, I’d suggest sticking with a version of this hole closer to what exists now. I doubt that they’d restore the original tee across the road and this version works better at this length.

The Gill 9 starts with the par 4 first on the Heritage Course and while it may not have the steep and deep earthworks of the Langford and Moreau 9, we can see from the first tee that it won’t be a pushover. It’s a fairly short par 4 so the only sensible play is to lay up short of the first fairway bunker, but that doesn’t stop people (including some of the golf course architecture and strategy buffs that I played with) from trying to hit the narrow neck to its right—with mixed results.

The dogleg right par 4 second is actually one of my favorite holes on either nine. There’s a diagonal water hazard up the right which good players should be able to carry—but if you push it, you’ll end up in a grove of arborvitae trees. The second is uphill to a very well defended green with a general back-left-to-front-right tilt, except in the back right, where it slopes away.

The third is right next to the fourth hole on the Langford nine and shares some of its features—the blind tee shot, the slight dogleg left on the approach. But it also illustrates the relative weakness of the architecture—there’s no interesting V-shaped carry bunker or crossing hazards on the approach (there is a blind pond on the right, which isn’t a plus). But there are several bunkers around the green and it’s still a demanding approach.

We cross Grove St. for the fourth hole, which is the ninth on the Heritage Course. It’s a slight dogleg right around a solitary bunker then gradually uphill to a green with flanking front left and right bunkers. It sums up the Gill 9 well—solid, but nothing special.

The next few holes have some special features, although not so much for the better. I like the short par 3 fifth (14) out of a chute of trees to a green with two bunkers right and one left. Like the rest of the course, it’d be a bit more interesting if there were more shape to the bunkers.

I have some pretty serious problems with the next three holes and one of them is obvious from standing on the sixth (15) tee. This hole has just become completely overgrown in the roughly 50 years since this nine opened. With tree clearing around the tee and the removal of a few white pines left of the fairway, this hole would be a nice drop shot par 4 where the primary challenge would be to keep your drive out of the right hand fairway bunker and keep your approach below the hole on the steep back-to-front sloped green.

I’m afraid that there isn’t much that can be done for the par 5 sixteenth, which might just be a classic bad hole. The drive is into a big right-to-left side slope and the approach is blind over granite outcroppings that were covered with dirt. You can try to go for the green, but it’s a small target and blocked by more dirt and grass covered granite outcroppings. An even more practical reason not to go for the green is that a push stands a good chance of taking out a windshield in the parking lot next to the clubhouse. The smart second is a lay up with about a 9-iron, which leaves a pretty interesting-looking approach over the aforementioned mounds. I guess that you could think of it as a risk-reward hole, where some of the risk is borne by the other golfers who parked their cars in the wrong place in the parking lot (or maybe you parked there too and you put out your own windshield…).

Another weakness of this part of the course is that the routing is awkward. We drove around the seventeenth green to get to the sixteenth, now we play back between them before driving uphill around the sixteenth to get to the eighteenth. As it plays parallel, seventeen is similar to fifteen but while it’s just as overgrown around the tee, there’s a bit more room out in the fairway.

Along with the second, the eighteenth is the best hole on the Gill 9. I think that strategically, this one would be a contribution to the Langford nine: there’s a ridge that cuts into the fairway diagonally from the left side and angles down the fairway to the right. If you follow the ridge out to the right, you’ll have an awkward approach across bunkers to the green. But if you carry the ridge, you shorten the approach and can play down the angle of the green, angles from front left to back right.

When I last played here in 2011, I really liked the Heritage Course. It’s obviously no match for Greywalls but I think that it complements it well. Other than the last few holes, it’s very walkable and doesn’t have so many opportunity to lose balls (or a golf cart…). It’s a good course for an evening nine or a league. It reminds me a bit of one of my favorite public courses in metro Detroit, Rackham, a Donald Ross course where several holes had to be redone to accommodate I-696. Now the architect of those new holes did a better job of trying to capture Ross’s style than David Gill did here and I think that the original Ross holes there are closer to their original state than the Langford holes here. But are courses by (at least in part) a great Golden Age architect where the general public can see some of what has made these guys so revered.

It seems like the club is trying to restore the Langford holes gradually and they are certainly to be commended for that. The restored eighth green is magnificent and it looks like they’re close to restoring the fourth to its original state as well. But I think that the bunkers might be an even bigger issue—the current bunkers are totally out of place and it seems like it would be pretty easy to restore the Langford bunkers. All of the earthworks are still there, so I think that it’s just a matter of putting sand in them. They don’t necessarily need to put sand in all of the original bunkers—many of the bunkers at Lawsonia have been kept as grass bunkers and I think that that works just fine.

But both for their own sake and because most people who play this course neither know nor care about Langford and Moreau, probably the easiest way to improve the Heritage Course is to clear out some of the trees on the fifteenth through seventeenth holes. There’s nothing wrong with the design of these holes (well, the routing isn’t great…), but they’re just absolutely choked out by trees at the moment, which makes playing them frustrating. They should do this while continuing their gradual restoration of the Langford holes. And in the really long run if they’ve restored the Langford holes and the budget allows, they might consider redoing the bunkers on the Gill 9 in the Langford style. This might be difficult to do because with the deep Langford bunkers come the huge, built-up Langford greens, but I think that the point of such an effort should be a more superficial aesthetic consistency rather than turning Gill holes into Langford ones.

Erin Hills has an eventful past. What was once a farm was supposed to be a golf course designed by Tom Doak in the late 1990s. But that never happened and the property was acquired by Bob Lang, who wasn’t a golfer but became obsessed with hosting a US Open. He jettisoned Doak and hired Ron Whitten, Michael Hurdzan, and Dana Fry to design the golf course. While the original course was minimalist, with the architects moving little earth even to build greens, Lang became convinced that the course needed to be more difficult and needed more ‘stuff.’ He eventually built bunkers everywhere, ran out of money, and was bought out by some hedge fund guys from Milwaukee. This story is the subject of probably the best piece of golf journalism that I’ve ever read: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s 7-part tale of the course’s troubled journey to the US Open. 

But by the time the last acquisition happened, the course was already slated to host the 2017 US Open, so there was little chance that they were going to return the course to something closer to the original vision. And that’s a shame because what exists today is a golf course that sits on one of the most beautiful pieces of property that you’ll ever see, but one that’s just trying way too hard. It’s too long, the holes are too far apart, and there are too many bunkers that make it impossible to play anything but aerial shots most of the time. It’s a course that looks to have been built solely to challenge low handicap golfer but the ultimate irony there is that the pros beat this course up more than any other recent US Open site. They made the excuse that it had been wet and the course couldn’t get as firm as they wanted but it’s June in the midwest and the course is on farmland: it rains a lot on the ground is good at retaining water. That’s why they used it for farming in the first place.

If it’s not already clear, I had a lot of problems with Erin Hills. On about the eleventh hole, Bob asked me what I thought of the course and I went on one of my rants, which I summed up by saying ‘this course is a lot of what’s wrong with golf today.’ We played with a guy who insisted on playing the championship tees and while he was a long hitter and a good golfer, we spent almost every hole looking for his drives in the fescue. On most of those holes, it’s at least 250 just to reach the fairway so any little bit off line and your in the fescue. Still, we couldn’t have played any faster than the five hours that we took because the group in front of us was also always looking for their balls in the fescue.


Despite my comments, I think that Erin Hills gets off to a very good start. The first hole features the course’s only marshland up its left side, but hugging this will make the lay up much easier. If you hit a weak drive out to the right (as I did), you’ll have to contend with the bunker in the middle of the fairway on your lay up. Once you get past this, the approach to the slightly domed green is wide open. It's a tough opening hole, but a very good par 5.

The second hole is one of the best on the property. If you drive it toward the bunkers on the right, you’ll have an awkward angle to the green and likely a blind shot. But if you can carry part of the hill with your drive, you’ll have a clear look down the deepest aspect of another dome-shaped (and small) green. I thought that the green was a little bit gimmicky, like a Pinehurst no.2 green, but with more severe run-offs. But apparently, it was placed on a natural knole and used to be an even smaller and steeper dome. Sometimes the hand of man is an improvement, at least for the sake of golf.

The third starts my complaints about the course as we’ll see 7 or 8 holes like this: a long par 4 with a huge fairway to a green that’s wider than it is deep with a big bunker right in the front middle, preventing you from being able to run the ball on. I’m not sure why anyone thought that this would be the right way to challenge the longest hitters. It plays right to their strengths: bomb it 350 inaccurately and wedge it onto the green. Meanwhile the guy who hits it 250 (me) is stuck with a long iron that they have to try to fit around the bunkers.

Four is the same thing except this time if you go over the green, you run down a hill. Even though I only had a wedge to the green, I couldn’t stop it up there. Five is the same thing as well, except we’ve reverse directions and are now playing into the wind, so what was a wedge is now a 4-iron.

The sixth is the first of what’s actually a pretty good set of par 3s. It plays over a valley to a ridge top green with a big false front. Although you can’t tell from the tee, the green is quite deep and pretty flat. So it’s better to miss long than short and if it’s playing into the wind like it was for us, take plenty of extra club.

We reverse direction again for the par 5 seventh, which was playing quite short—even I was able to reach the green in two with a hybrid from 550. Same deal again, bunkers blocking access to the front of the green. I decided to hedge a bit right and that was the right call; short and right of the green is a fairly easy pitch.

Nothing about the long par 4 eighth is easy. While there are no bunkers off the tee, unless you carry it a long way (into the wind), you’re going to hit into the upslope and have a long, blind approach. Of all the holes at Erin Hills, this one might bother me the most. It falls beautifully across the land and has a good green site but what do they do? Block the entire entrance to the green with bunkers. I don’t get it. Why on a 440 yard par 4 where you drive into an upslope would you put bunkers across the entire front of the green? I swear, they designed this course with about 15 people in mind and one of those, Brooks Koepka tore it a new one in the US Open. This approach to design doesn’t even work for the people it’s designed for so really, it works for no one.

Nine is a short, downhill par 3 that I was a bit worried about. It has another dome-shaped green and is surrounded by bunkers, so I was worried that it was going to create a Kingsley-Club-2nd-hole situation where if you hit it in one, you go back-and-forth across the green until you eventually pick up. But this hole actually works because the green is large enough, the slopes aren’t that steep, and the bunkers aren’t that deep. The ball will hold on most edges of this green. Maybe I’m underestimating the possibility of disaster because everyone in my group hit a decent tee shot, but even that’s some evidence that it’s playable—because it was windy.

I had a hell of a time with the tenth—I couldn’t even reach the fairway. But unlike all of the long par 4s on the front, this green is open in front and fairly receptive. Eleven is also restrained for this course—only about 350 yards from the normal back tees (7,150 yards) and without fairway bunkers. A drive up the left side gives you a better angle at right pins but if you drive it up the right, you’ll be playing into the slope of the green. This hole is as easy as it gets at Erin Hills.

And twelve is as good as it gets—a beautiful natural hole winding through several of the hills in the links-like middle of the property. The drive is onto a ridge and if you hit a good one, you’ll go over the other side and have a wedge to the green (and also maybe drive into the group in front of you like the one behind us did). The approach is over another ridge to a green that angles front-right to back-left. This isn’t a very interesting hole from a strategic perspective because there’s no way to open up the angle of the green, but it’s a hole that was routed over interesting land in an interesting way and doesn’t try to outcompete it with a bunch of bunkers. For me, that’s enough to make it an excellent hole.

The thirteenth isn’t a very interesting par 3 but I appreciate its visual simplicity—something that does not characterize the par 5 fourteenth. We’re back to the bunker overload here with blindness, alternate fairways, and confusing turns in the fairway to boot. Like many of the holes at Erin Hills, the key thing to do is…play the correct set of tees. I was playing off the middle green tees (still 6,750 yards) and was able carry the fairway bunkers on the left off a good drive. If you can go for the green in two, play over the middle of the rough-covered mound as everything near the green feeds right. The alternate fairway short and right of the green doesn’t serve much purpose.

Fifteen is one of three shorter par 4s (with two and eleven) and this is the one that they made drivable for the US Open. It’s not well-suited for that. The green is perched up on the side of a big hill and there are bunkers everywhere. The only sensible play here is to lay up, preferably just short of the left centerline bunker. You’re pretty much dead if you miss this green (as I learned from both of my playing partners) so wherever you drive it, go for the center of the green. You may three-putt if the pin is near an edge (as I learned from myself) but you won’t make a 7, which is otherwise quite possible.

The sixteenth is a lovely medium-length par 3. While the green is surrounded by bunkers, there’s enough room up there that you should be able to hit it with a decent shot. Seventeen is something that I wish more holes were: bunkerless. The hole doglegs slightly left around the hole and the fairway slopes gently to the right, making it a tough drive. But you want to drive it up the right side here because a ridge blocks the green from the left side of the fairway and the ground short of the green slopes gently to the right.

The final hole sums up Erin Hills nicely: there’s just too much shit going on. There are bunkers on both sides of the fairway seemingly for the entire hole then when you get to the lay up area, there’s a bunker in the middle of the fairway too. It looked like a nightmare on my GPS. And it’s very frustrating even if you hit a good drive because the second is blind and there are bunkers everywhere. I hit what I thought was a decent second only for my ball to roll into bunkers on the left side of the fairway. I played conservatively from there and was able to save a six, but it was an annoying way to finish.

Despite all of my griping, I actually played really well at Erin Hills. In fact, one of my proudest moments ever in golf was at the end of the round when the caddy for my championship-tee-playing playing partner said that it was the first time he had seen anyone play the championship tees and then asked me what I shot. 74, I was very proud to say. Because I had played the appropriate set of tees, I was able to take advantage of some of the easier holes and hit some good shots into the harder ones. I also got a few lucky bounces.

But I played one of my better rounds ever and had good luck—I’m not a very long hitter (usually ~250 off the tee) and I don’t hit the ball that high. And if I played 10 more rounds here, that’d probably be the best score that I’d shoot by a few. This course demands a very modern, aerial game. It’s the type of design that you could do on any type of land, which is why it bothers me so much here—the land is so good and it really deserved a design that used the undulating character of the property to generate most of the strategy. But this design doesn’t generate strategy so much as it generates difficulty and it does that almost entirely through the use of bunkers. It would have been possible to build a great course on this land with no bunkers.

I’m not surprised that the pros beat this course up in the US Open. The fairways aren’t that narrow, so it just becomes a matter of bombing it off the tee and landing high, soft iron shots into greens. Go figure that the guy who benches 350 lbs. won the tournament. The next time that they play a big men’s tournament here, either Bryson DeChambeau or one of his disciples will shoot 20-under and win. In the meantime, thousands of golfers will play the course from too far back (’tip it out’ as my playing partner douche-ily put it), spend half their day in the rough, shoot 120, and cause the pace of play to be even slower than that on the PGA Tour.